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Solution: Ash Ketchum vs Yugi Moto but they don't have any other Pokemon or cards they just throw hands.

In the manga, Dark Yugi brought the cards to life with his Millennium Puzzle when they were "just cards" and the first duel revolved around the cards actually trusting the owner of the cards (in this case Blue Eyes White Dragon refused Kaiba's command). This inspired Kaiba to create the holograms--which in the manga were glass rooms--and used it for a rematch in the final Death-T battle. This is where the iconic Exodia reveal comes from that puts Kaiba into a coma.

The anime skips most of the first 7 volumes and condenses both Kaiba duels I mentioned above into one. You miss a lot of context to Yugi's powers as a result. The series basically starts off as Yugi possessed by the Millennium Puzzle as an avenger challenging people to Shadow Games. He can make a Shadow Game out of anything. You got sound-sensitive toys? Let's play a silence game. You got a stack of cash and a knife? Let's play a dangerous game of greed. You got literally nothing? Let's play a game of moving only one finger. (He ends up actually murdering that person btw) Hell, if he were actually in the Pokemon universe he could probably turn a standard battle into a Shadow Game and not have to deal with Duel Monsters if he wanted. But the anime focused on cards cards cards cards cards dice monsters that one time cards and cards.

My point is not that Yugi has any chance against Ash or anything. It's that people ignore a lot of context from Yu-Gi-Oh because they only remember what Gallop or 4Kids chose portray misses the big picture.

Also monsters like Exodia, Raa and such were real beings before becoming cards so... yeah

Zinith I actually already knew about those shadow games shown in the manga. There are a few specifics you pointed out that I wasn’t aware of, but overall, shadow games are what I meant when I said that I think dark games from the original series can make the monsters real. Maybe I should have been more clear in what I was talking about.

Even with that factor in play though, there’s still the issue of the monsters being featless and not having specific enough abilities.

Maybe there are some examples out there I’m not aware of. But for the Yugi vs Ash idea at least, I just don’t see how you could make Pokémon fighting Duel Monsters work.

You have at least answered the question of how Yugi could be used in vs debating at all. And I thank you for that. But I still think there are more fitting opponents for him than Ash.