- "Oh, you're real polite, ain't ya? Well, I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, shithead."
— Justin provoking Sakigake Hiraku before their match
Justin Kitagawa, also known as The Panther, is a mixed martial artist and the young champion of Underground-1, along with being one of the eight champions who took part in the Real Championship tournament. He is part of the same gym as Okubo Naoya.
Appearance[]
Personality[]
Power & Abilities[]
As a fighter in the Real Champion Tournament and the current reigning champion of the Kansai-based underground martial arts promotion, Underground-1, Justin is an incredibly powerful fighter, recognised as such by other stars of both the public and underground martial arts spheres, such as Okubo and Kim Janggi. His base martial art is wrestling, similar to Okubo's. His training in which has afforded Justin extraordinary levels of durability, being able to tank numerous powerful shots from other powerful and unconventional fighters such as Sakigake Hiraku, and even Kaolan Wongsawat. Amongst all Justin's feats of physical durability, the most prominent and helpful of which is his borderline supernatural neck strength. By conditioning his neck muscles to such a degree, it allows Justin to disperse the force of an incoming attack. Okubo has stated that thanks to personally training Justin's neck conditioning himself, he is able to not only lift up five heavyweight (who would roughly weigh 120kg/264lbs on average) martial artists at the same time, but is also allegedly able to perform such a flawless bridging stretch that one could host a tea party on top of him.
Kitagawa Suplex:[]
A regular wrestling suplex move, though thanks to Kitagawa's superb physical conditioning, it has enough power to almost instantaneously knock out powerful opponents such as Sakigake Hiraku, whom he defeated with this very move. Not only is his Suplex powerful enough to knock out a phenomenal striker like Hiraku, the move is in fact so powerful that it sent shockwaves throughout the arena in which the Real Fighter Tournament was being held, all the way up to the announcer's booth.
Panther Bullet:[]
Seemingly the apex of his wrestling-based fighting style, Justin initiates this technique by assuming an unusually low stance, which consists of him crouching on all fours close to the ground much like the technique's namesake. By staying so close to the ground, he is able to nullify his opponent using most conventional strikes which would usually be thrown with a closed or opened fist. The true danger in this technique is that it effectively forces the opponent to utilise leg-based strikes such as kicks and knees, which he is then able to detect the intention of his opponent, and ankle pick them. This allows Justin to set up not only a swift takedown, but also a full-mount position, and potentially even ground and pound.
While this technique is highly effective in being able to neutralise high level strikers, it does possess a rather simple weakness in that if the grappled opponent is able to hip thrust with enough momentum, they can effectively buck Justin off of them and even launch a counterattack. This would be the very technique that Kaolan used in order to escape Justin being on full mount position and ultimately knock him out.