Pokémon Fighting Championship

The finals of the Pokémon Fighting Championship’s Heavyweight tournament were imminent. The Castelia City Colosseum was sold out for the evening. Fans had been waiting for weeks for the main event between Blaster McMassive & Max Smashmaster, two of the most impressive and fearsome competitors the Championships had ever seen. The arena fell silent as Gavin Loudspeaker, the Exploud ring announcer cleared his throat. The thousands of voices stopped as his cough cut through the air. He inhaled and released a commanding booming voice,
“Ladies and Gentlemon, It’s TIME for your PFC Main Event of the evening. The following is the Heavyweight Tournament Final bout and will be fought over 5 rounds of 5 minutes each. The referee tonight is Bryce Remsburg.”

The Exploud indicated to a Medicham behind him, decked in an immaculate baby blue shirt, suit trousers and wearing white latex free gloves to deal with any blood from the combatants. Gavin inhaled and span 90 degrees to his left, pointing to an enormous Poliwrath wearing navy blue gloves and a pair of loose knee length shorts, similar to cargo shorts without pockets.

“Introducing first, fighting out of the Blue corner! This Mon is a Submission fighter, he weighed in tonight at 165lbs. Fighting out of Cerulean City, Blaster McMassive!”
The crowd erupted for the most part, apart from a young Poliwag in the VIP section. His name was Marty McMassive, the son of Blaster, and he wanted nothing to do with his father’s lifestyle. He was only here on this occasion because his father had promised to retire after his ‘certain victory’ and he just wanted an end to it all so he could be free and go off on his own somewhere. He sunk down into the crimson crushed velvet chair and sighed.

Gavin allowed the crowd to die down before spinning on the spot and pointing to a relatively trim Machoke in the opposite corner of the octagonal cage. His gloves were a shade of ruby red, wearing tight red boxer shorts that reached his thighs instead of the more traditional Machoke briefs. There was no sign of the usual belt around his waist, his full strength was unleashed, not that he needed it.
“And his opponent, fighting out of the Red corner! This Mon is a kickboxer, he weighed in tonight at 150lbs. Fighting out of Cianwood City, Max Smashmaster!”
The crowd erupted once more as the Machoke waved to the VIP section smiling. His own son Sam, still just a Machop, was in there sat next to Marty. Sam approved of his father’s lifestyle and wished to emulate him, but also wanted his dad to come home in one piece, unlike the last time the two foes had met in the Octagon. Blaster had shattered Max’s forearm with an illegal knee strike which resulted in a disqualification and a fine.

The two competitors walked to the centre of the ring to listen to the referee. Blaster was clearly not interested in listening to the usual drivel of ‘Rules this and disqualification that’. He made no attempt to touch gloves with his opponent, unlike Max who held his out to show respect. Bryce sent the competitors back to their respective corners and held his right arm aloft. Upon seeing that both were settled and ready, he lowered his arm to commence the fight.
Up in the stands, Marty was still slumped in his seat. He just wanted the fight over as soon as possible. Sam looked over at him and wondered why any son of a fighter wouldn’t want to watch. He asked the young Poliwag;
“What’s up? I’ve seen you before at these events, I’m guessing you’re Blaster’s son?”
The Poliwag nodded forlornly.
“So why don’t you like watching your dad fight? I’m proud of mine, and I want to be just like him one day.”

Marty sighed, “I just don’t like fighting. I don’t want to be anything like him. I just want to live my own life and do things my way, and he just doesn’t understand. He wants me to be a fighter, but I’d rather…”
“You’d rather what?” enquired Sam, a note of curiosity in his tone.
“I’d rather be a singer. I want to entertain people with my voice, not my fists.” Marty’s voice trailed off.
“Well let’s be honest, your dad hardly uses his fists either. Those key locks of his are devastating.” Sam conceded.
“Yeah… He can’t wait for me to evolve so he can teach me how to use them, or use them on me…”
“Wow. That’s… That’s just wrong.”
“Yeah… That’s why I just want him to stop fighting so I don’t have to deal with him any longer. I just want to leave the house and be my own Mon.”
Sam nodded, he could understand that.


Back in the ring, the fighting was fierce. The first round had ended without either of the sons noticing, with Blaster notably on top. He had attempted to put the Keylock onto Max repeatedly without success, while managing to deflect the blows of most of the ferocious kicks coming his way with exuberant blocks.


“Keep it going big guy, you got this!” Blaster’s corner man told him, “Once you get that Kimura on him he’s gonna tap or he’s gonna snap.”
“Good work Max, you’ll tire him out soon enough then he’ll be open for the big shots.” The corner man for the Machoke was more level in his approach, years of wisdom echoed behind his words.

The bell for the second round struck and the competitors returned to the centre of the octagon, circling each other. Max used his superior range to strike Blaster’s body with a few quick strikes before retreating before he could be taken to ground. Blaster charged at his taller opponent, grabbing a leg and taking him down to the mat. Having gotten Max into the mount position, Blaster unleashed a barrage of hammer fists to Max’s upper body, glancing off of the Machoke’s chest. He sent one final fist into Max’s face, crushing his nasal bone and causing a rush of blood to come pouring out of the Machoke’s nose.

While his opponent was briefly dazed, Blaster grabbed his right arm, the one he had previously broken and began to apply the Kimura Keylock, his specialty. No opponent had managed to survive it in the past, every single one had submitted as the pressure on the elbow joint became so intense it risked snapping the arm.

Up in the stands, Sam and Marty both looked on in horror at what was happening. Sam put his arm around Marty, for his own sake more than Marty’s. They huddled together, eyes shut, just waiting for it to end as Blaster wrenched on Max’s arm.

Back in the Octagon, Max was clearly grimacing. The hold was tightly locked on and causing tremendous discomfort. The crowd was going ballistic. The commentators at ringside were enthusiastically and prematurely celebrating Blaster McMassive’s victory. Bryce stood over him, asking if he wanted to tap out. He clenched his teeth and shut his eyes, trying to loosen the grip. He had to get out fast. There was no time to think, reaction was necessary. He began rocking backwards while on the mat, trying to get enough momentum to flip over his head.

Blaster felt his opponent rocking, he was obviously trying to withstand the pain, any moment now he’d submit and victory would be his. Going out on top was what he deserved. He felt one last rock and smiled, he was about to be declared champion. Then he felt an almighty push as Max flipped onto his hand & knees, turning Blaster upside down. The Machoke slowly stood up, the Poliwrath still clinging onto his arm, dangling in the air. Max slammed his right fist into the ground, shaking Blaster loose with the blow.

The noise of the crowd caused Marty & Sam to open their eyes, there had been no bell to signal the finish. They saw Max standing tall and were amazed. Someone had finally escaped the Keylock. A tear of joy left Marty’s eye, his father’s reign of terror was finally coming to an end.

Blaster slowly got to his feet, he was stunned. Someone had escaped. This had never happened before. He looked his opponent square in the eye and lunged for him. The blow missed and Max struck him in the back of the head with a spinning backfist. The Poliwrath was rocked. He was on the edge of being knocked out. He turned with all the speed of an oil tanker towards his opponent and was met with a roundhouse kick to the face. He was knocked out the moment the foot met his jaw.

The crowd were on their feet in a standing ovation for the victor. Bryce Remsburg raised Max’s arm to the sky in triumph as a horde of Blissey crowded around the fallen Poliwrath to check on his condition. Gavin Loudspeaker returned to the Octagon with a microphone to conduct the post-fight interview.
“Ladies and Gentlemon. The referee has called an end to the fight in the 4th minute of the 2nd round due to a knockout. Your winner, Max Smashmaster! Do you have anything to say Max?”

Max looked up to the crowd and saw his son in the VIP section hugging a Poliwag next to him. Blaster’s son. He smiled, knowing his son had a good heart. He paused for a moment and took the microphone,
“First of all, thankyou to everyone who came here tonight,” he stopped while the crowd cheered, “and thankyou to my family who have put up with me through my career. I’m glad that my son Sam was here tonight, as I know that he wants to follow in my footsteps, and I’m proud to say he is a better Mon than I ever could be. And it’s because of him that I have decided to retire from the Pokémon Fighting Championship with immediate effect so that I can spend more time with him and his mother, and hopefully train him to take my place in this sport, if he wishes to.”

He stopped and pointed to his son, tears in his eyes. He saw Sam smiling down at him before turning to the Poliwag beside him.

“Marty, my dad’s coming home,” Sam grinned. Marty looked up at his new friend, smiling back to him.
“I don’t know if mine is, but I’m pleased someone’s is.”

Spoiler

Target Mons - Machop & Poliwag
Rank: 2x Simple - 5k each
Char Count: 9632
Based on the Ultimate Fighting Championship, but with Pokémon obviously.

 

Mine since you got skipped in the story flood. :0 Or something, I dunno. The point is you get a grade soon.

 

@Prince Vultan;

Introduction
Your introduction is pretty straightfoward. It gets straight to the point of what's going to happen right off the bat so that we can dive right on into the action. In a Simple ranked story, that works beautifully since the MCR (which is only a recommendation, but still) is so low to begin with. Simple stories tend to be shorter anyways, so diving right into the action like you've done works well.

Your plot is just as straightforward as your introduction too. A Poliwrath and a Machoke, both fathers with sons, fighting it out to be the champion. Simple enough plot. I didn't really see any issues with the plot from what I read. Everything was pretty well explained for a story of this rank, so no issues here.

Detail
This, however, was where I did start seeing some issues. While you described what the Pokemon, specifically the Medicham, Poliwrath, and Machoke, there wasn't much description in way of what they looked like. You mention the Poliwrath and Machoke's sizes, enormous and trim, but other than that, the reader has no idea what they really look like. While it's easy to assume, and safe to do so as well, that both Poliwrath and Machoke have arms and legs given that there's punching and kicking, there's no significant details that really identify the two Pokemon other than their names. The fighters are pretty flat characters though, or so I think, and understandably so since the focus should probably be more on Poliwag and Machop than Poliwrath and Machoke.

The same applies to the Poliwag and Machop, both of which are your target Pokemon. Not much is given in terms of appearance. That said, they are two of the more developed characters in the story. You gave them personalities and focused on them more so than not. They're also complete foils to each other: Poliwag wants to sing, not fight whereas Machomp wants to be just like his father. At the same time, even though their fathers are fighting, they manage to be friendly towards each other; I thought that was really sweet. Basically, while there wasn't much in terms of appearance, the children felt more developed to make up for that. I'll expand more on this later though since I feel like further details could be more specifically given in a later section.

As a recommendation for future stories and describing the appearance of Pokemon, if you don't want to do it right away when you introduce it, that's fine. Even if you dispersed details throughout the story to give the reader an idea of what it looks like, then that would work too. It doesn't matter how you do the details when it comes to appearance, at least in my opinion, but it's better to have it than not to, even if it's dispersed throughout the story. The same applies to human characters, or any other type of character you put into a story.

Grammar
Grammar was pretty spot on, minus a handful of small issues that I'll just briefly skim over to help you out in future stories. One thing I did want to note before I dove into that though was the formatting of the story itself. I skimmed through another story you recently posted since I claimed this, your WWC to be specific, and I noticed the same thing, so I figure I could address it here so you could maybe revise it in the future. It's not something I'm going to be awfully picky about, and it won't hurt you much when it comes to the final verdict, but I dunno, it just kinda bothers me a bit, I guess.

Your story, dialogue and all, is basically just several blocks of text with spacing in between those blocks of text. Maybe it's a stylistic thing, or maybe it's your word processor, I'm not sure which, but I dunno. If it's a stylistic thing, that's cool, I won't bash you for that. If it's a word processor thing, I'd look into it and clean it up a bit before submitting the story. It helps when the thing isn't several blocks of text, especially when it comes to dialogue. Please your grader, haha.

But anyways, on to more slightly serious issues. Not really serious, but these would be more of a deal than that above, haha.

The period after devastating would be a comma instead of a period. "Sam conceded" sounds more like a dialogue tag than a standalone sentence, so a comma would be used instead of a period.

On the flip side, "ladies" wouldn't need to be capitalized since the dialogue tag precedes the dialogue. Other minor issues here would be that there should be a comma between commanding and booming, and "it's" doesn't need to be capitalized; I assume they both just may be things you overlooked, especially "it's" being capitalized unnecessarily, but since I've already got this quote pulled up, I may as well address it. xD

Last one, after "Blaster's corner man told him," the comma should be a period. "'Keep it going big guy, you got this!' Blaster's corner man told him" is its own standalone sentence. The following bit of dialogue after that, even though Blaster's corner man is still talking, is its own standalone sentence as well.

Climax
I actually like the creativity here. This Keylock sounds like some sort of unbeatable move that has helped Poliwrath gain victory in all his other matches, and the audience and commentator's reactions justify that well. Machoke proves that wrong by breaking free of it. Still, I liked how Machoke was able to show the world that you could escape from the Keylock. It wasn't some unbeatable move that it was portrayed to be, and that's good, because next to impossible to beat moves in stories aren't that great and make everything so one sided. Props to you for that.

Plus, Sam's dad retires from wrasslin' to be with his son. That's a plus too. There's a happy ending to all this, at least for Sam. It would've been nice though to see if Marty would get a happy ending or if his father would keep fighting and eventually make his son train to be a wrassler just like him. I mentioned earlier that the children got more development than their parents, but this makes it feel as if Sam got the better end of the development stick, for lack of better phrasing. Perhaps adding something about Marty's life following the match and what it would be like would be nice as well. Better yet, Marty's father was just knocked unconscious and the medi-Blissey are tending to him at this point. Though there's a cheerful happiness in the air from Machoke beating the Keylock, I feel as if Marty should be at least somewhat worried about his father, but none of that is mentioned. Don't get me wrong, I can see why Marty's happy, because his new friend gets to have his father come home, but Marty just suddenly has to face the fact that his father may not come home. I feel like Marty's feelings at the end concerning his father should be addressed in some way, just so that it's not left open there. Even if he really disliked his father, I could still see there being some sort of concern for him unless Marty purely hated his father, and I didn't get that impression from the Poliwag.

Conclusion
Two Simples has an MCR of 10k. You're at 9675, so you're not there, but you're not far off either. That's okay though! MCR is only a recommendation!

That said though, there are some things you could still address that could push you to that 10k MCR, or even above it. Things like further details on the appearance of the Pokemon, Marty's feelings about his father possibly not coming home, and also just the fact that his father was knocked out and the medi-Blissey are tending to him. While Marty may be used to this since his father is a fighter, you also made it sound like he wasn't really at a lot of the matches his father was in because he didn't approve of his father's lifestyle.

Taking everything into consideration, I feel confident enough in saying that Machop is captured on the premise that of all the Pokemon in the story, Sam feels like he got the most attention and he got the better end of the development stick as a result. However, this is a Simple ranked story, and these aren't meant to be perfect. It's not fully up to par, but no story really is. I feel like I'm a little on the fence on this, but I'm going to lean more towards the passing side and say that Poliwag is captured too just because Marty was developed enough for me to feel comfortable passing it. There is the issue with his post-match feelings, but I think the positives outweigh the negatives here, and I feel like everything else about Poliwag is enough to warrant a capture.

Enjoy your new Pokemon!