Become a Prizefighter

Become a Prizefighter is a quest in Fallout 2.

Walkthrough
Talking to Stuart Little at the Jungle Gym gives the opportunity to participate in a boxing championship. The basic requirements are being male with a Strength equal or higher than 6. Females and weaker males will have to pass a relatively Easy speech check. Stupid (IN <4) males can box, but do not receive pay or rematches. Stupid females can't fight at all.

In the ring, there are four increasingly difficult opponent. Each victory yields experience points and monetary rewards (50% of the winnings or 75%, if the player character has Speech 76% and Barter 76%):


 * Joqq - $50/75 and 500 xp
 * Pete McKneely - $50/75 and 750 xp
 * Evan Holyfeld - $400/600 and 1000 xp
 * Masticator - $1000/1500 and 2500 xp

Victory can be attained through:


 * Knockout - score a critical hit that knocks the opponent unconscious or if he himself manages a critical failure (killing them counts as this)
 * Technical knockout - cause the opponent to flee
 * Points - last twelve full rounds and win most of them by landing more punches than the opponent

Defeat conditions are similar, except the roles are reversed:


 * Knockout - same as above
 * Points - same as above
 * Kicking the opponent or removing the gloves and punching the enemy without them results in disqualification

Four succesful matches result in the Prizefighter reputation (unique responses from the Reno townsfolk), access to gym lockers with impunity and a 5% bonus to the Unarmed skill, on top of Damage Threshold and Damage Resistance bonuses from every round. Bartenders, drug dealers and other generic "traders" will also raise their prices.

How to Throw Punches
Boxing isn't very difficult, at least not on normal difficulty. Unarmed 65% and a pair of normal gloves should be sufficient, provided the player rests their character between fights. Here's a couple of pointers:
 * It's best to use the plated boxing gloves in the ring, instead of the normal ones. They can be bought or found in the basement of the Shark Casino. Simply have them in inventory when agreeing to a fight.
 * Rest between matches. Although the game regenerates the player character's hit points during the fight (a number of HP equal to the player character's endurance is regained at the end of each round), it's hardly enough to cover the damage.
 * About the gloves. Carrying either type of them at the start of the match grants the character:
 * permanent +3 to Damage Threshold against Normal damage (up to a maximum of 100)
 * permanent -1 to Damage Threshold against Plasma and Explosive damage
 * permanent bonuses to Damage Resistance: +1% to resistance against every damage type except fire (to a maximum of 90%) if wearing normal gloves or +2% against Normal damage, +5% against Laser damage and +1% against other types, with a meaningless -1% to the unlisted EMP resistance.
 * These bonuses are applied at the start of each match; purposefully failing the last match with teh Masticator and asking for a rematch will give a fifth bonus.
 * Losing a match happens. To continue boxing one has to ask Stuart Little for a rematch immediately. He only gives one more chance and reduces the player's cut to 25% should that happen.
 * The final fight with the Masticator is tricky: with 115 HP or less, he has the chance to tear off the player character's ear when hitting them, adding the Player's Ear to their inventory and taking 1 point of Charisma in exchange. The reverse is also possible: with Unarmed 160% or higher, the player can bite off the Masticator's Ear in combat. Perfect souvenir!

Exploits
Before winning the Prizefighter title it's actually possible to get infinite rematches, although this is the result of two bugs:
 * When winning the game, Little's dialogue will always go as if the player's talking to him for the first time, meaning they can ask about boxing, negotiate a deal and get theirr "first" match (though the game keeps track of how many opponents they have defeated).
 * Without winning a match, they have to leave dialogue after losing a fight, talk to him again, ask for a rematch and fail a Speech check (which is impossible at 100% Speech or above). He will then let them box again.

The only reason for doing this is for the damage threshold and resistance bonuses.

Bugs

 * There may be a bug that makes the player lose the rematch before they even start fighting. This is because when combat ends directly after scoring a critical failure that causes the player to lose their next turn, the game remembers that they have a lost turn coming up, and if that happens to be at the start of the next fight they lose again. Simply entering combat mode once in between the fights to get rid of this "debt" should take care of the matter.
 * At the beginning of each round starting with the second, after the ring girl appears and the other boxer runs towards the player, there's a small window where they can press A to enter combat mode. This can be used to attack the opponent, or kill the ring girl. The latter changes nothing except that the ring girl will be lying in a pool of blood instead of walking around and saying "Round x!". Killing the opponent in this round will cause the player to be stuck in the ring with no ability to leave. The player can also use this to get an odd item - the Special Boxer Weapon, a useless sort of club - by killing the ring girl, then knocking a boxer unconscious on the same hex and looting his body before the combat round ends. Killing the announcer this way will leave the player stuck.