Pokemon Type Reviews: Fighting

Fighting is another type of somewhat ambiguous definition. All Pokemon fight, but some Pokemon are apparently much fightier than others, whether that means they're a wrestler, a boxer, a swordsman, a ninja, or they just knock you over the head with a damn board. Reflecting this, fighting types actually have a lot in common with normal types, including an inability to hit ghosts, but are also one of the only things in the game that's super effective against normal. With their special elemental power of fightiness, they can also break steel, ice and rock pokemon, and their "heroic" nature allows them to punish the dark type.

Fighting is vulnerable to only flying, psychic and fairy. Psychic because "mind over matter" I guess, fairy because...magic? Anti-violence? And flying because...I don't know. I guess Fighting just needed another weakness and they didn't feel like throwing poor poison a bone for once.

Aesthetically, fighting is the type for humanoids, and I'm not really the kind of monster fan who vehemently rejects anthropomorphs, but looking at the full selection of fighting pokemon, it has a record percentage of designs I am extremely impartial to. The ones I love, I REALLY love, including some of my latest all-time favorites, but the ones I don't actively love tend to be pokemon whose entire existence I repeatedly forget. Heck, it took until the fourth generation for me to even find a fighting pokemon I liked enough to actually use! Thanks, Toxicroak!

MY TOP SIX FAVORITES:

Probably no surprises here, though I was torn between the inclusion of Timburr and Bewear. I guess I like Timburr more as a design; Bewear is supported mostly by its surrounding flavor.

MY LEAST FAVORITES:

I don't really strongly dislike Emboar, Infernape or even Mega Lopunny half as much as the other three, but they all could have been better, for sure.

THE MOST CREATIVE:

Though I did say I was mostly indifferent to the fighting type, it DOES get pretty inventive with how it defines "fighting" and how it combines that with different creatures. A mosquito draining "energy" (blood, we all know it's just blood) to pump its muscles, a ninja-assassin arrow frog...a street punk lizard that sheds its skin. Phenomenal ideas. I wouldn't expect a literal yeti crab to be a fighting type at all, Pangoro is still a funny as heck twist and Breloom is just such a weird, unexpected creature entirely.

SCARIEST/MOST BADASS:

THE PRETTIEST:

THE CUTEST:

Finding "cute" in the fighting type is actually kind of challenging; they all tend to err on the side of tougher and more menacing, even when compared to types like dark, ghost and poison!

THE GOOFIEST CHARM:

WHAT'S MISSING?

A Training Dummy

There are several kinds of thing people call "training dummies," but one of these rotating wooden contraptions would make the most interesting monster - obviously some sort of tree-like fighting/grass type, and like Wobbuffet or Pyukumuku, a "counter-attack" specialist! I know those don't always work out in practice like they do on paper, but I'm a fan of style and flavor over viability anyway.

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