As Garo, Sword’s ultimate job is to fight horrors, monsters born from the darkness of human desires. In order to carry out his duties every night, he trains (and eat five pounds of steak) to keep his skills up and to maintain his Schwarzenegger-like physique. Prior to officially donning the Golden Armor, he spent most of his youth training both physically and spiritually, which is common in traditional martial arts whether they be hand-to-hand or weapons oriented. Thanks to that training, he is very disciplined (despite his casual perverted tendencies at the sight of big breasts) and composed when it’s showtime. He shows genuine care for Sophie, the girl he has to protect, and the innocent as a whole. He never lets the adrenaline go to his head in the middle of a fight since he has enough experience and training to win as efficiently as possible. Whenever he has time alone, he can be seen training by lifting weights, hitting his heavy bag, or swinging his sword. Due to the qualities he exhibits, he’s an ideal martial artist with his morals and work ethic.

If you don’t think professional wrestling is a martial art, we defer you to Kazuyuki Fujita, Kazushi Sakuraba, and former UFC heavyweight champion Josh Barnett. Hell, Satoru Sayama, the first real life Tiger Mask, was a pioneer of Japanese MMA and we see that legacy carried out in anime form with Naoto Azuma as he becomes Tiger Mask in Tiger Mask W (with the W intended to be read as double). Real life pro-wrestling may be sports entertainment (a fancy way of saying it’s a work, a wrestling term meaning it’s a performance), but in anime, you’re free to make it as real as the UFC. Anyone can call wrestling fake, but nobody can just get off the couch and do what wrestlers do every night on the road almost 365 days a year. It takes disciple and years of training (and try doing the Iron Sheik's workout with Persian clubs).

Just like all wrestlers, Naoto has to go through harsh training to get into the best shape he can get not for the sake of performance, but for the sake of actual competition. He learns strikes based on Japanese stand up martial arts such as kickboxing and karate, the takedowns of amateur wrestling, the acrobatics of lucha libre, and the submissions of catch wrestling. Stu Hart, father of 5-time WWE champion Bret Hart, trained most of his wrestlers in catch wrestling and some say his training was as grueling as Naoto’s (apparently that training helped Chris Jericho win an actual backstage fight against Goldberg, a wrestler infamous for only having two moves while Jericho was the self-proclaimed Master of 1004 Holds). As to how Naoto exemplifies on what makes an ideal martial artist, he isn’t driven by becoming just a champion and for the money, but by aiming to becoming a better human being and being an inspiration to others in the way watching wrestling helped him get through a crisis in his teenage years.

With the right touch, Kenshiro can make your body explode and make blood gush out like a fountain. However, he will only fight when he needs to defend himself and the innocent. Thanks to his sense of justice, he’s a great representation of martial artists in fiction. In addition, when a fight is all said and done, he’s willing to pay respects to his opponents not for the sake of giving him a worthy challenge, but that they were an individual that lived by their own convictions, even if they were opposite of his own. The fact that forgives and acknowledges his enemies as fellow human beings demonstrates why he’s worthy of not just being a martial artist, but a master.

In the world of sumo, we have Hinomaru. Not only is he smaller than average for someone his age at 157 cm, by the rules of sumo’s sanctioning body, he’s can’t even compete as a pro (since the minimum height requirement is 167 cm)! Thankfully, there’s an exception to the rule where if he can become a Yokozuna at the high school level (where such height rules don’t apply), then he can get an exception to compete as a pro. Thanks to his work ethic and passion for sumo, he managed to become a Yokozuna at the elementary level. He cares about the art and his goal is to one day become a Yokozuna at the pro level, but to Hinomaru and the real world of sumo, it’s a way of life.

As to why he’s a worthy martial artist, Hinomaru isn’t someone to take the easy way out. He could have joined Ishigami High School, which has one of the best high school sumo teams in the country. Instead, after a chance meeting with Oseki at another high school (which he assumed was Ishigami), he decides to join that school instead due to being touched by Oseki’s work ethic and passion for sumo, and to make Odachi High School become the best sumo team in the nation from scratch. Everyday, he’s always training and likely wears his sumo belt under his pants, or at times, doesn’t even bother to wear pants! Not only does Ushio work hard for himself, but for his teammates who are relatively new to sumo, which is the ultimate reason why he makes this list.

For the longest time, it was really difficult for the mainstream to acknowledge boxing as a martial art but thanks to the mainstreaming of mixed martial arts, where many of its competitors actually seek the instruction of accomplished boxing coaches such as Freddie Roach, many are opening to the notion that it is. You can learn it not just for the sake of competition, but for your physical and mental health as well, which is one of the main goals in martial arts training. As we said in on our entry for Hinomaru, martial arts is about the smaller guy being able to fight or even defeat a bigger guy, and with this entry of Joe from Megalo Box, we’re positive he exemplifies those qualities of a true martial artist.

He may be naturally talented, but his circumstances have never allowed him to reach his full potential. Thankfully, a shot at the Megalonia tournament will prove his worth. But Megalo Box isn’t just regular boxing, combatants wear augmented gear on their upper body which improves performance. However, Joe decides to compete without out it and he’s already undersized compared to his opponents. Through Joe, we learn that fighting and/or martial arts isn’t just about who has the better gear or bigger muscles, it’s truly about technique, and thanks to that, Joe finds his way to the finals. However, Joe doesn’t really care about the money despite how winning it solves all his problems. He fights just to prove his self-worth to himself and those that supported him, and that trait perfectly distinguishes him as a true martial artist.

When it comes to the world of women’s Judo, many know of former UFC champion turned WWE superstar Ronda Rousey. Prior to her MMA career, Rousey was a bronze medalist in women’s Judo. But in the world of Japan, the first female judo superstar wasn’t an actual medalist, but an anime character by the name of Yawara Inokuma, who was training to become a 1992 gold medalist. Thanks to the anime’s popularity, Ryoko Tamura, a real life female Judo practitioner was also gaining popularity and fans named her Yawara-chan, after the character (and she would win multiple medals in her career and become a politician).

Many of the people listed here gained their skills through hard work and dedication because they lacked something physical. Yawara may have years of training under her grandfather, but some argue that her talent in Judo is God given once you learn that when she was a child, she made easy work of her own father, who was a national champion. Even if her talent in Judo was blessed by nature, she still goes with her grandfather’s training with the traditional Judo warm ups of rolling on the ground to learn how to take a fall, etc. Furthermore, she shows how martial arts, most especially Judo, is meant for someone her size to defeat bigger opponents. In the beginning of the series, she makes quick work of a thief with a Judo throw, and can beat the boys team at her high school. Later on, she defeats opponents that significantly outweigh her in open weight tournaments. Throughout the series, she expresses she doesn’t want to do Judo and wants to be a regular girl. But thanks to seeing how people look up to her, she uses that to ignite the passion she needs to win the gold.

On the outside, Miu may seem like you’re average high school girl (with the body of a gravure model) but put your hands on her, forget about ending up in jail, you’ll probably wake up in a hospital with a full body cast because she’s a dedicated student to her grandfather’s dojo where she has learned Kung Fu, Karate, Ninjitsu, Muay Thai, and Aiki Jiu Jitsu. Thanks to her years of training, she can handle herself against most attackers. But handling herself in a fight isn’t what qualifies her as a great martial artist, it’s her humble attitude and willingness to help Kenichi, a classmate who gets bullied.

Seeing that Kenichi needed help and touched by his determination despite zero chances of winning, she goes out of her way to share with him some pointers on how to beat his opponent, who was much larger than him. Thanks to her assistance, Kenichi manages to knock his opponent out. For someone her age, she has it together compared to the adults of her household, who tend to be more childish and does her best to make them act their own age. Thanks to her training and upbringing, she demonstrates passion and maturity which is what traditional martial arts should pass on, and that is why she is a great role model for the martial arts.

Yujiro is back from the previous edition to this list and his portrayal in the recent Netflix Baki series proves he’s worthy to be listed again. He’s the Fedor of anime fighters and much more. In previous seasons, he’s portrayed rather villainously since he killed Baki’s mother, and invaded the White House just to prove he could (thankfully he wasn’t around during the government shut down). But towards the end of the Netflix series, you do see that he is capable of having true respect for fellow martial artists. He actually wanted to challenge Muhammad Ali, yes THE GREATEST, to a fight back in the seventies when he came to fight Kanji Igari (who is inspired by Antonio Inoki, who actually fought Ali in a legit shoot match in the same time period) in a boxer vs. wrestler match.

What’s interesting to note is that while he could have fought Ali when they met early morning on the streets, Yujiro chooses not to out of respect that Ali wasn’t the same fighter anymore due to Ali being suspended from boxing for three years because he refused induction into the armed services (just like the real Ali). The Yujiro we tend to know would have mocked him but this time, he actually showed great respect to Ali for standing up for what he believed in at the cost of his own boxing career. Knowing that the Ali he met wasn’t the same Ali from prior to his suspension, he chose not to pursue his challenge out of respect. The fact that Yujiro is capable of showing such qualities proves he’s worthy of being a martial artist with noble principles.

While he had the Z edition to Gokuu on our previous list, we thought it’d be best to revisit him again from the Super series. A lot of people tend to see Gokuu as a superhero, but he isn’t. Based on the Japanese portrayal, he’s someone who is simply motivated just by the thrill of a fight and the series portrays it’s because of his Saiyan lineage. When he faces someone such as Beerus or Jiren, it’s not for the sake of trying to save the universe or anything of that nature. He just wants to fight someone who can give him a fight. When he isn’t fighting, he’s always in training just to keep in shape and that’s his way of having fun. After learning that Whis, Beerus’ assistant was also his master, he went as far to seek him as his master and thanks to his training, he was able to go Super Saiyan Blue.

When it came to the Tournament of Power, all he wanted to do was just find out who the best was and take them head on and he didn’t bother thinking about the fate of his universe being at stake. To someone like Gokuu, fighting for the sake of fighting is what makes him feel alive, and that makes him different in comparison to other traditional heroes. Gokuu is a pure example of you can take the Saiyan out of the fight, but you can’t take the fight out of the Saiyan. Some say people were born to fight and even when Gokuu was separated from his own warrior race, fighting still found a way to him since his adoptive Grandfather was his first martial arts teacher. But beyond his Saiyan pride, the true lessons his Grandfather gave him of valuing life and your friends are probably the greatest lessons a true master could teach their student, and that’s another reason why Gokuu is a great martial artist in the purest definition as he is willing to forgive past opponents such as Tenshinhan, Yamcha, and even Frieza.

At number one, we have Ken Asuka from Karate Baka Ichidai. As a matter of fact, his story is taken directly from Mas Oyama’s, the founder of Kyokushin Karate. They share numerous parallels such as being pilots in World War II, starting their martial arts training in Manchuria, and how they trained in seclusion for over a year and read Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of the Five Rings to get an idea of how to improve themselves as martial artists. Like Oyama, Asuka wants to spread the gospel of Karate around the world and is willing to participate in freak show demonstrations or take on all challengers. It goes as far to adapt Oyama’s most famous exploit, chopping off a bull’s horn with his bare hand!

Though the nature of Ken’s Karate is brutal and rough like the actual Kyokushin style, he doesn’t do it for the fame or money, even when he could have pursued such avenues with ease. He does it to not only test his skills, but to prove that Karate is number one. As word of his achievements spread out, he’s willing to take more students and share what Karate has done for him not just physically, but spiritually as well. The fact that he dedicates his life to Karate and is always trying to aim for the unattainable perfection demonstrates why he’s a worthy martial artist. He knows that even with a black belt, training is never over and you can still learn much more.