Title Defense Soda Popinski defeated without dodging!

This is the first time that this fight has ever been accomplished in real time without a single dodge from Little Mac.

As some backstory to this challenge, In 2009 there was a GameFAQs thread that asked the question "How many boxers can you beat in Punch Out Wii without dodging?"

Several Wii Punch Out speedrunners took up the challenge out of curiosity and posted their results in the thread. Interestingly enough, just about every single boxer in the entire game was solvable, a few of which required clever strategies that just barely worked.

However, 3 boxers remained unsolvable from that thread, and they were Contender Super Macho Man, Title Defense Soda Popinski, and Title Defense Super Macho Man.

Fast forward to 2019, skipthetutorial posts a video of him attempting the challenge for the contender fights, and accomplishes the same fights that we did!

   • Can You Beat Punch Out!! Wii Without ...  

Due to this reinvigorated interest in the challenge, I decided to give this another look. I streamed my futile attempts at Super Macho Man, but then out of curiosity decided to look at the other impossible fights. Turns out, you can get away with some really really sneaky stuff on TD Soda!

Between McHazard, Mysteryman95 & I, this theoretical strategy emerged. However, in practice, it seemed like I would have to land a frame perfect move cancel in order to complete the fight, which is hard to do after 2 very rare TKO recoveries.

As a side note, since people have been pointing this out repeatedly, yes, I already know that pressing the 1 and 2 buttons recovers health when the opponent is down. I do not recover health in this run, because recovering health just delays the inevitable, since Soda will just keep throwing uppercuts until I fall, and mashing to get enough health to withstand that is impossible for the instances it happens in this run. Additionally, recovering health ends up wasting time since Soda would have to throw more punches to take me down, which actually ends up only being detrimental, because if anything, it would only leave me with less time to beat Soda in round 1.

It's also worth noting that the headgear I have is something that you unlock with 100 losses, which is still unlocked from a savefile that I still had from 2009! This reduces damage and heart-loss significantly to where this could be feasible for a human being to reasonably pull off.

I tried practicing the frame perfect punch for a while by simulating what phase 3 would be like, which involved doing the speedrun strategy up until the 3rd knockdown, then starting the "no dodge" ruleset from there. This allowed me to get familiar with his pattern that he would throw at me for the 2 TKO recoveries, which was great!

However, there were a few unknowns that I could not confirm for myself without having an actual double TKO recovery happen. I had considered that his speed would be increased compared to my practice attempts, but I couldn't practice or prepare for it, other than just knowing that it's possible, and that I should try to adjust to it if possible.

When I started actual attempts with the headgear, I got the double TKO recovery effectively on my first attempt that got far enough to roll the dice on it! To my surprise, he does in fact increase his speed every time you get knocked down for your TKO recoveries. This made things pretty scary during this attempt.

Once I missed the counter on his hook immediately after the 2 TKO recoveries, I felt like it should've given me the star, but didn't think much of it. Then when I was looking at his gloves for the visual cue I had practiced for, I noticed he was moving way faster. This is when I realized in the moment that he had increased speed.

I was also uncertain about whether or not the puny health refill for the 2nd TKO recovery would be enough for me to get back to the part of his pattern where he throws counterable hooks again, so the moment I survived that last sidestep hook, I knew I had one final chance to win this fight. Because I knew the speed is increased, I mentally prepared for his hook timing this time.

Getting stars off of his hooks are fairly generous frame windows... but if he is fast, then that window shrinks down to only 2 frames (this is only one 30th of a second!)

I landed my final counter-punch, got my 2 frame star, and put this dodgeless fight away for good. Now the only unsolved fights are the Super Macho Man fights, and those two will most likely stay that way.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed this backstory & challenge video!