@azywrckt
oh course, that's ignoring the fact that he's already beaten spear in a match, he can't attack which disqualifies him for what they consider the biggest criteria for ability, or the fact that attacking them would make them feel like defying you would be "righteous". So, yeah, there isn't a quick fix like kicking their asses. If anything, that would make them want to fight you more.
A bigger point is what most people here seem to be missing, that they DO get it. This isn't like the early chapters of the WN version, they aren't actually stupid. It's just that this is what happens when they realize that they aren't measuring up, they go into sunk cost and double down. They had two choices, they could have accepted their incompetence and that their fundamental views of themselves and the world is wrong or they could say that the failure was due to a lack of some resource (such as time, money, stats etc.). They chose the one that pretty much everyone chooses and went with the one that doesn't mean everything they did up to this point was flailing about.
So, yeah, this isn't the behavior of people who "just don't get it". This is the behavior of people who "get it" and desperately wished they didn't.