If the floor was lava, Medel and Gaolang would have died.
I'd say it's more Gaolang's fault for not being aware of his footing, him being unable to really decipher his opponent's hidden intentions and getting baited whilst he already had been informed how different the Purgatory match rules were than the far more simple and direct Kengan Association match rulesets.
Fact of the matter is even in real life, if you threw someone off a cliff, you win. If you explode someone with a grenade instead of engaging in fist fights, you win. Does it matter how you killed/defeated your opponent? No I think not. Sure, people will shit on you because "much honour", "true Chads butt heads instead of gay ninja tactics" and such and it may be true. You could be physically inferior.
Except, humans are not supposed to be all about brawn only. Your IQ and intellect and cunning matters a lot too; I'd say even a bit more than sheer battle prowess. For fighters, especially those engaged in a battle of wits and tactics, if you aren't physically superior to your opponent enough to completely remove any sort of tactics and stategy they could employ to defeat you, why, then you'd better sharpen your brain and keep uo your wits at all times unless you want to get duped and outmanoeuvred by your opponent into losing.
Also, the mangaka put out the ring outs to make things more interesting. Of course, Kengan Association fighters were paranoid about it but hadn't truly grasped how dangerous and worrisome that rule could be, as Gaolang found out when he got baited by it. It's not fair to him because as a Kengan fighter all the matches he has had till now had no ring-out rules and thus his ingrained instincts were not acting up to inform him he was committing a mistake and about to get baited hard.
As for Medel, I agree his cool outlook disappearing was a bit of a downer but as a fighter who got pushed out back to the walls when he understood that Gaolang's defense, tankiness and Deus Ex Machina Diamond Fist were too much for his capabilities, him coming out with a tactic to win the match even though he knew he lost the battle of martial might, solidified a good example of what a true Purgatory fighter is at heart. I understand now what Toyoda meant by entertaining fights. Kengan matches are good to see and everything depends on the skills and wits of the fighters and what they bring to the floor but Purgatory fighters have more dimensions to make fights interesting.
If Gaolang had not gone full beatdown mode and remembered that there were still some avenues for victory for Medel, I believe he would have won. Could have countered Medel's bait and kicked him away out of the ring with a full-powered frontal Muay Thai kick/knee but alas!
Still, now that the ring out rule has been brought to the attention of the Kengan Association fighters as a worrisome tactic that could add advantages or disadvantages depending on how adept they feel in applying or countering it, it was a low-hanging fruit that was bound to be used in the versus matches sooner than later. No Purgatory fighter worth his salt would have missed that useful tactic that the Kengan Association fighters were not acclimatised with seriously.
It's like being told by your fellow CS: GO teammates that the new grenades have a different timer setting update, not fully internalising that information in your head and staring in confusion as you blow yourselves up cooking the grenade too long.
To each their opinions though. I wonder how they are going to rule out the winner in this double ring-out scenario.
