For this fighter file, we have Toa Mudo. The “seeker” coming from New Zealand, surpassing in physical height/weight Julius Reinhold and in a natural way without steroids unlike the German muscleman, which further emphasize the fact that Toa Mudo is a monster since born.
The Purgatory gladiator descends from the warrior Rona Mudo’s bloodline, having inherited a fearsome body and a particular technique. He’s a seeker whom doesn’t brandish his fist for anyone else’s sake but his own, to prove to everyone his supremacy over the martial arts world.
Strengths: The Mudo Style used by Toa has three named techniques (so far), Wai (Water), Hau (Wind) and Maungamanawa (Breathing Mountain). The three techniques are defense or counter, when it comes to offensive techniques there doesn’t seem to be any, as Toa only used Brute Force while attacking. Based on what we saw of the Mudo style (Rona Mudo in the war using a spear or the draw explaining the usage of the Mudo style redirecting a spear stab) we can assume the Mudo style is a weaponized martial art, wether is using weapons or countering weapons.
Wai, similar to Niko style’s water kata, consist on going limp in his muscles to disperse the damage received. With this technique, Toa doesn’t need to waste moves to put up a guard, he simply takes the attack. As we saw with his fight against Julius, with his enormous frame and musculature, unlike the Niko style and Formless style users, he doesn’t need to fall back to completely disperse the damage since his frame is thick enough to pad the distance the opponent arm bury into his body.
Hau, similar to Niko style’s redirection kata, consist on applying a minimal force into the opponent center of gravity to divert the enemy’s upcoming attack in the form of parries or to throw him off balance with ease.
Maungamanawa is the fusion between Wai and Hau, the user goes limp to let the opponent’s attack flow through its body and divert the trajectory of the upcoming attack against them, amplified by one’s own power. To understand better this technique, we need to compare it with another technique with the same function, Niko Style’s secret technique, Demonsbane.
Demonsbane combines the four katas in the following way; redirection diverts the upcoming attack in a safe direction, water makes the body limp so it’ll safely travel around the user’s body without huring it, fire checks its possition and center of gravity so successful and effectively return the strike, adamantine hardens one’s muscle while striking to add more power to the counter.
Maungamanawa covers the two more important basis of Demonsbane (redirection and water) but lacks the Fire and Adamantine forms that add more power into the counter, even then, Maungamanawa is stated to add more power into the attack, How’s that? Well, for the fire kata part, Toa’s enormous frame put him in a solid position no matter where he is, imagine one of his feet already covers two normal foots, so keeping always balanced is no problem for him, and for the Adamantine kata part, Toa’s glorious musculature already put him in position were his hand only can work as something as hard as diamonds. This way, Maungamanawa can successfully recreate the effects of Demonsbane, and as it only require two aspects instead of four, it makes it easier to perform.
Weakness: Toa is vulnerable to mail piercer, just going limp in the muscles would be enough to nullify the pain, but mail piercers, attacks designed to send the force into the insides of the body are effective to attack Toa’s organs, which he can’t go limp on, if we compare it with the Niko Style and the Formless style, Toa just stands there going limp in his muscles, which doesn’t protect his organ, meanwhile the Niko style consist in adding the redirection kata to divert the attack to strike another place far from the vitals of the user and then going limp to disperse and the formless style also includes throwing themselves out of the floor to let themselves be blown away instead of receiving the damage.
Even though Toa is also formed in diverting attacks like the redirection kata, he doesn’t seem to be able to use Hau with anything other than his hands or head, with his frame he can’t divert incoming attacks at close range so he can only use Wai, which, as we saw, is vulnerable to mail piercers.
The Mudo style, as I stated it before, seems to be a weaponized martial art, so besides lacking a decent offensive bare-handed tactics, it’s also designed as a long-range fighting style, Toa is not pretty good against close range fighters as it seems he didn’t managed to beat Arayishama Jurota and was defeated by Rolón in a single strike, that’s for his fighting style, but Toa has another weakness that seems to be his biggest flaw so far. He is a seeker to “prove” that he is the best, that means the already think that he has become the strongest possible, even though he acknowledged Rolón and Medel's strength, he's too confidant and reliant on Maungamanawa and seemingly ignores the technique’s flaw.
Maungamanawa’s biggest flaw are it limitations in usage, the only two examples of a successfully executed Maungamanawa included big and circular motions, as it seems that unlike Demonsbane, Maungamanawa needs a big swing to deliver the counter and the swing is limited to circular motions, unlike Ohma who managed to delfect Wakatsuki’s punch to his head in a triangle-like angle. This swing limit the usage to horizontal or vertical counters, even though he managed to deploy the technique by diverting a punch to his head, the enormous range of motion of the technique required Toa to use his hands while needing to use the vertical motion, as he couldn’t divert the attack via his head when his arms were pushed out of the way. It is also to be noted that this swing would be predictable against someone with a smaller frame and easier to dodge.
Another flaw in the usage, or to be more exact, flaw in the comprehension, is that the technique doesn’t necessary amplifies the attack’s power. If we compare Toa’s Maungamanawa against Julius with Ohma’s Demonsbane against Wakatsuki. Ohma is pretty far behind in terms of power in comparison with Wakatsuki, Julius and Toa, yet he almost knocked out cold Wakatsuki with an effective Demonsbane used against a normal punch of Wakatsuki. If Toa, whose own power exceeds by far Ohma’s used this counter against Julius, whom had as much power and Wakatsuki and was forcing himself, he would have ripped Julius head, yet he didn’t and Julius kept conscious after the blow and got up after resting 8 seconds, Why’s that? As I said before, the basis of the “power amplification” of the Maungamanawa simply consists in replacing the power of the attack with his own superhuman power, that means the power amplification is not that much against someone similar in terms of strength and durability.
Note: Rolón beat Toa with just one strike, seemingly striking his vitals before he could go limp to disperse the damage, that is indeed a flaw but it wasn’t included in the list because attacks that comes outside of the enemy’s awareness are mostly an universal flaw, applicable to any fighter, even the best ones.