Despite being the titular character of the show, Baki doesn’t get involved in many fights. He spends a lot of his time figuring out his relationship with Kozue. This is particularly odd because the five prisoners hoping for defeat arrived in Japan to challenge him specifically. Fortunately, some of them do get to experience that fate when Baki comes to terms with his feelings for Kozue. We get to see Baki square off in a handicap fight against Sikorsky & Yanagi. Although Yanagi knocked out Baki in their previous encounter, this fight turns out to be a brutally one-sided fight in favor of Baki.

Baki learns Yanagi’s technique quickly which allows him to rip off his opponent’s skin with a single strike. Yanagi is torn apart by the technique and Sikorsky isn’t spared from a similar fate when he joins up the fight. Baki even turns into a quasi-demon near the end, channeling some of his father’s spirit in his beatdown of the two fugitives. Yanagi questions Baki’s supposed supernatural fighting skills that he gained as a result of love but considering how easily they were handled, perhaps he should re-evaluate his training methods. The only unfortunate part of this fight is that it ends prematurely when Baki decides to leave with Kozue in his grasp. Even then, Sikorsky and Yanagi aren’t the same in the fights that await them thereafter.

Katou isn’t a top tier fighter in Baki, and of all the people we wanted to see fight Dorian, Katou might’ve been 5th or 6th. Nevertheless, Katou decides to pursue Dorian into his hiding place under the sewers and challenges him to a fight. It becomes clear that Katou isn’t up to par with his opponent but it’s still a lengthy and brutal affair. We see Dorian grease his hands with shards of glass to ensure he’s dealing maximum pain to Katou. This results in a vicious moment where a glass lodges into Katou’s eyes and Dorian punches it in deeper.

Katou furthers his descent into defeat when he falls for Dorian’s hypnosis. The hypnosis makes Katou see himself brutalizing Dorian with a kick to the nether region, a broken nose, and even two fingers to the eyes as Dorian begs for mercy. When Katou wakes up, his throat is slit in his last desperate attack to defeat Dorian. A ton of credit must be given to Katou given that he survives long enough to square off with Dorian a second time later while wheelchair-bound and unconscious.

The first significant fight of Baki may also have been the best one. Hanayama helps out Baki by taking on Spec whilst he attempted to take advantage of Baki being distracted by his date with Kozue. Spec is revealed time after time to be an unbelievable fighter such as when it’s shown he nearly deconstructed the statue of liberty with his vicious strikes to the base. Each of these incredible feats only serves to highlight how immovable Hanayama is as he survives all of Spec’s best attempts.

Spec even resorts to shoving explosive shells into Hanayama’s mouth and blowing apart most of his face. Even then, Hanayama continues to haunt Spec. The fugitive uses a flash grenade, flips the car Hanayama is in, riddles him with bullets, nearly snaps his neck, lodges a finger into his brain, and locks in a rear naked choke hold but Hanayama keeps coming back with every assault and its Spec that fails to keep standing in the end. You’ll be hard pressed to find a more over the top fight than this lengthy epic.