Donald Gibb is proposed as a yes, coming off Revenge of the Nerds and First and Ten into a $65 million film where he is focal, but he was the tenth most important person in Revenge of the Nerds and the hosts settle on that film as his apex, noting this conversation has never happened on a podcast.
The actress Leah Ayers (as transcribed) is a yes: her IMDb is a hundred TV shows she was never on full-time, with a good run on Walker, Texas Ranger.
Chong Li, aka Bolo Young (as transcribed), is this over Enter the Dragon because he never fights Bruce Lee there, and this character is iconic and spawned countless memes; Kowloon Walled City is floated but Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is suggested as its actual apex.
Frank Dukes (as transcribed) hit his apex here, any time before the internet; Forrest Whitaker did not; it is Van Damme's splits apex.
Donald Gibb as Ogre; Janice Kent and the free press; the fight scenes; Chong Li's nose-blowing, steroid physique, 'I break you' line and celebrations; Van Damme's terrible acting; the arena; Stan Bush's 'Fight to Survive'; young Frank's Giants gear; the first underground walk to the Kumite; the name Kumite; the tournament structure; Chong Li overall
Donald Gibb as Ogre: his trilogy ran Revenge of the Nerds, First and Ten (the HBO football series with O.J. Simpson) and Bloodsport, a nice five-year run; he is the perfect sidekick with no turn coming, Jean-Claude's buddy through and through; the hosts joke the intro left out that Chong Li has done more steroids than everyone in Hong Kong combined.
Janice Kent and the importance of a free press: she hears whispers, goes undercover for the Atlantic, cracks a centuries-old event never written about, gets in the room, talks to five fighters, and pulls out her recorder in the front row where everyone will notice.
Chong Li details that aged beautifully and disgustingly: blowing boogers out of his nose about seven times, the late-eighties steroid body nobody has anymore with a chest like a love seat, 'break my record, now I break you' as a yearbook quote, and celebrations that one host finds creepy and dorky while another calls them the scariest thing possible since he cannot raise his arms over his head; his unreadable, smiling-but-furious savagery with a weird daintiness makes him scary, a riff imagines him at home with a wife and kids, glasses on, saying he got carried away and killed a guy again, which lands as both funny and unwanted since seeing him clothed in the reflection is odd, and Brock Lesnar stole the pec flexes from him.
Van Damme's terrible acting has aged best for one host because it is so bad; the director seemingly cared only about the fighting and treated dialogue as a hindrance, which the others concede was the smart play, and Van Damme was decent seven years later.
The arena is the perfect fight arena: a sandy floor you fall into, nothing to change, and alligators around the pit rejected as too far and too much upkeep.
Asked whether he would change the arena, it is called kind of perfect; the Kowloon walled city in Hong Kong, since knocked down, fascinates as a structure, and a secret fighting arena inside it is cool. — Jason Concepcion
The arena is the right size, maybe 400 seats, smaller than a middle-school gym with the crowd close; the hosts would pay $249 for a UFC or Bellator pay-per-view called Kumite with 400 fans, lots of cameras and a dirt floor.
Stan Bush, who wrote 'Fight to Survive', is the Joe Esposito of the late eighties; young Frank with his bad French accent wears a number 55 Giants football jersey and a San Francisco Giants hat, rooting for two Giants teams in two cities; a kid in the bullying flashback wears a Bartles and James (as transcribed) shirt, and the hosts wonder whether the boys knew they were going in for the sword.
Comparing the first underground walk to the Kumite with the Scorsese one-shot nightclub walk in Goodfellas, they are very close, 1A and 1B, with Scorsese edging it on camera work. — Jason Concepcion
The Goodfellas shot goes on continuously, but the Kumite walk brings you into a world you would never have access to; Kumite is called a great, incredible name, just the best.
The tournament-movie structure is added as aged best: any movie with a tournament and a board where names advance works because little needs explaining; this leads to a proposed Ringer MMA tournament where Rusillo is floated and Brian Curtis, with hands like football helmets, a Texan who has been in brawls, is called the secretly strongest man at the Ringer.
Tournament movies listed: Bloodsport, Undisputed, Karate Kid, Warrior, Best of the Best (a cumulative tournament), Enter the Dragon, Never Back Down, Mortal Kombat and The Quest, basically Bloodsport 2; the late-eighties video-game wave shaped them; the Best of the Best hero not finishing his opponent makes sense now because Daehan returns in Best of the Best 2.
Chong Li is the overall pick for aged best: 31 years later the hosts are still in awe of what they created, with every part of him interesting; his celebration, Tom Hardy's character leaving the ring immediately in Warrior, and Daniel LaRusso's confused look at his support group are called the three best post-fight celebrations.
