Become a Prizefighter

Become a Prizefighter is a quest in Fallout 2.

The New Reno championship is a boxing tournament that the player can join if he/she wants to. Having a high Unarmed skill is recommended prior to attempting this quest.

Participants
The player will have to fight four different opponents in order to win:
 * First fight: Joqq
 * Second fight: Pete McKneely
 * Third fight: Evan Hollyfeld
 * Final fight: The Masticator

If the Chosen One goes into the Jungle Gym and talks with Stuart Little, the Chosen One can box. If the Chosen One is female or has a Strength lower than 6, he/she will have to pass a relatively easy Speech check. The Chosen One will meet four increasingly difficult opponents: Joqq ($50, 500 xp), Pete McKneely ($50, 750 XP), Evan Holyfeld ($400, 1000 XP), and The Masticator ($1000, 2500 XP) (if the player kills him, he/she will face Xander Holyland instead). This is assuming that the Chosen One gets 50% of the winnings; with Speech 76% and Barter 76% Chosen One can get 75% instead. The Chosen One can also get kill XP for the boxers you manage to beat to death; this should happen some of the time and counts as a knockout. Other ways of winning include: "normal" knockout (if Chosen One score a critical hit that knocks Chosen One's opponent unconscious or if he himself manages a critical failure), technical knockout (if the Chosen One makes him flee), and points (if the Chosen One somehow manages to make a fight last 12 full rounds and win the majority of them by landing more punches than the Chosen One's opponent). If the player wins four matches, the Chosen One gets the Prizefighter reputation, which lets the Chosen One empty the gym lockers, making the Chosen One popular in New Reno and gives him/her a +5% bonus to Unarmed skill.

Should the player lose a fight, the player must ask Little for a rematch immediately or the player won't get another chance. The Chosen One will then go up against another boxer ( The Chosen One's royalties will drop to 25%, but the XP is the same). The player can only convince Little to give you one more chance (unless you exploit a bug), which means the player can fight five matches in all, and there's a tempting reason to do that (see another note below).

Bugs

 * If the player wins the game, Little's dialogue will always go as if you're talking to him for the first time, meaning you can ask about boxing, negotiate a deal and get your "first" match (though the game keeps track of how many opponents the player has defeated). If the player hasn't still won the game, the player has to leave dialogue after losing a fight, talk to Stuart again, ask for a rematch and fail a Speech check (which is impossible if you're at 100% or above). He will then let Chosen One box again.
 * If Chosen One loses by knockout there may be a bug that makes Chosen One lose the rematch before he/she even gets to start fighting. This is because when combat ends directly after Chosen One scores a critical failure that causes the loss of your next turn, the game remembers that Chosen One has a lost turn coming up, and if that happens to be at the start of the next fight Chosen One loses again. Simply entering combat mode once in between the fights to get rid of this "debt" should take care of the matter (assuming the player wouldn't rather reload after such an unfortunate occurrence).
 * In the unpatched version, having the Masticator bite off your ear could give you a bonus to your Charisma, because the command to change the stat was being used incorrectly. This bonus would be equal to Chosen One's current Charisma minus one, except if this would take Chosen One's new Charisma above 10 in which case nothing would happen.
 * At the beginning of each round starting with the second, after the ring girl appears and the other boxer runs towards you, there's a small window where you can press A to enter combat mode. The player can use this extra round to attack Chosen One's opponent or the player can use it to kill the ring girl. The latter changes nothing except that the ring girl will be lying in a pool of blood instead of walking. If the player manages to kill Chosen One's opponent in this combat round, Chosen One will be stuck forever inside the ring after the announcer makes a brief appearance. This can 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.

Behind the scenes

 * When picking the name for the box, some are silly. Among them the Chosen One can pick Balboa - a reference to the movie series Rocky.