Thunder City Tournament

The Thunder City Tournament (サンダーシティトーナメント) refers to a fighting tournament, a triennial event held in Thunder City featured in Thunder Shock. It appears briefly in Final Endings.

It is the first tournament introduced in the Evershade series and the secondary setting for Thunder Shock. Hosted in a large stadium in the center of the city, the tournament offers monetary rewards for its top five winners. It appears to be a counterpart to the Weston region's Lightning City Tournament.

Rules and Characteristics
The Thunder City Tournament originated in a festival held years ago at the stadium in 1999, as its grand event. The festival is no longer held, but the stadium continues to serve as the tournament grounds. It features the Easton region's strongest fighters. Besides the title of Thunder City Champion, the winner of the tournament receives a grand total of 500,000 dollars (later increased to ten million dollars) as a prize. In the 7th and 8th tournaments, the prize is given to the winner directly after the event, while in the 38th tournament, according to Jonas Johnson and Thorton, they send it by mail. According to Ruby, there are prizes to the top 5 in the 8th tournament. 10 million dollars to the first place, 5 million to the second, 3 million for the third, 2 million to the fourth, and 1 million to the fifth.

In the tournament, anyone who comes into contact outside of the ring, is knocked out and does not stand up until commentator counts to 10, or gives up, automatically loses. If both fighters are knocked out and neither can reach their feet by the count of ten, the match is normally declared a draw. However, the tournament as a whole must have a champion, so if this happens in the final round, a special "sudden death"-esque rule is employed: the first one to stand up on both feet and state the entire sentence "I can do anything better than you!" is declared the winner. The tournament forbids any use of weapons, protective body gear or teams (although natural weapons, such as bear claws, are allowed, and it is never clarified if cups are included in the ban on protective gear). Poking someone in the eyes or hitting them in the groin is also not allowed, although the latter can be overlooked if it was accidental. The most important rule is that killing the opponent is not allowed. Disobeying any of these rules results in disqualification from the tournament.

The tournament has two parts: the preliminaries and the tournament itself, although it is unknown if this has changed since 2020, seeing as the tournament appears to still be a thing even in the 22nd century. The preliminaries are held indoors and without an audience. In the preliminaries, all the contestants are divided into several groups, usually eight (after the 8th Thunder City Tournament, more contestants than ever have started entering, according to Sapphire in Stardust Requiem). These eight groups fight in mini-tournaments with a one-minute time limit for each match (matches that last longer than one minute are decided by points). The eight winners, one of each group, move on to the actual tournament.

Originally, the winner of the final bout was automatically named the champion, and the returning champion had to win the tournament just like everyone else. However, by 2020, the tournament structure was changed so that the winner of the actual tournament was not automatically the champion, but merely won an opportunity to fight the returning champion in a title fight.

The participants fight in pairs; the order of the fights is decided by each participant taking a random number from a box. As there are usually eight participants, the tournament has three levels: quarter-finals (4 fights), semi-finals (2 fights), and the final fight. The winner of each fight goes on to fight with the winner of the other fights, with a tree diagram showing the order of the fighters, going up on the aforementioned levels, ultimately leading to the final bout to determine the champion.

Thunder City Tournaments are hosted, run, and announced by an announcer.

List of Known Champions

 * Keiichi Haven (6th Thunder City Tournament)
 * Azure (7th Thunder City Tournament)
 * Sapphire (8th Thunder City Tournament)
 * Raiden (38th Thunder City Tournament)

1st
Date: September 7, 1999

An unknown contestant had won the very 1st Thunder City Tournament.

2nd
Date: September 7, 2002

An unknown contestant had won the 2nd Thunder City Tournament.

3rd
Date: September 7, 2005

An unknown contestant had won the 3rd Thunder City Tournament.

4th

Date: September 7, 2008

An unknown contestant had won the 4th Thunder City Tournament.

5th

Date: September 7, 2011

An unknown contestant had won the 5th Thunder City Tournament.

6th

Date: September 7, 2014

An unknown contestant had won the 6th Thunder City Tournament.

7th
Date: September 7, 2017

Known Contestants:
 * Keiichi Haven (winner)
 * Shosha (quarter-finalist)
 * Kirby (semi-finalist)
 * Azure (finalist)

Winner: Keiichi Haven

Runner-up: Azure

8th
Date: May 7, 2020

Contestants:
 * Shosha (quarter-finalist)
 * Kirby (semi-finalist)
 * Victor (quarter-finalist)
 * Charon (quarter-finalist)
 * Gloria (semi-finalist)
 * Ruby (finalist)
 * Dexter (quarter-finalist)
 * Sapphire (winner)
 * Azure (returning champion)

Winner: Azure

Runner-up: Sapphire

9th
Date: May 7, 2023

Known Contestants:
 * Sapphire (returning champion)

Winner: Sapphire

10th
Date: May 7, 2026

Known Contestants:
 * Sapphire (returning champion)

Winner: Sapphire

35th
Date: January 7, 2110

 Known Contestants:
 * Raiden (winner)

Winner: Raiden