Ragu is a returning champion of the Deathmatches, famous for nunchucks, colorful boots, a lovingly kept head of hair he calls “the dew,” and above all the Ragu squat, a crowd favorite the Acolytes perform along with him. He is loud, petty, and gleefully insulting, and he is devoted to his wife, Prego. Across three bouts he beat an identity thief, was slowly dismantled in deep space by a zombie hunter, and finally evolved into Prego before falling to a necromancer in front of a live crowd.
Story
Imitation Game
Ragu came into S5E12 — Imitation Game — Kopy Katt v Ragu with one win already to his name. Thea summoned him to The Dread Fortress to face Copycat, who boasted of 420 stolen identities. When the Lord of Fate (The Arbiter) recognized “the same Ragu with the… squat,” Ragu was already squatting. He staked out his ground at once: “Nobody copies Ragu. Stay over there in your lane, I stay in my lane.” Then he wrote out his vow on a tablet: “I will not be number 421.” In The Crimson Keep, beneath a glowing moon, he unmasked Copycat’s impersonation of the Lord of Fate by pointing out that the mustache “wasn’t thick enough.”
His nunchucks drew first blood, a hit “right in the forehead.” Her feather boas missed him, and his professional string-dodging made short work of her Silly String. When Copycat fed a cheesy pizza roll to the lactose-intolerant Thea, Ragu took Thea up as a “fart gun.” He unleashed his signature super whirlwind fart explosion, now on “number five,” but the first blast missed and Thea shat a liquid expulsion all over Ragu’s head instead (“I told you not to feed her”). The second became “the unending fart of 12 days,” which got into both fighters’ mouths and down into their stomachs and wore them both down. Then he threw Thea bodily, butt-first, into Copycat’s face, and Thea thanked Copycat for helping her wipe it off. Copycat struck back at his pride. She projected his baby photo, a bare bottom in an inflatable pool, onto every screen in the Fortress, and later disguised herself as Prego. Ragu caught the impostor with one question: Prego’s favorite vegetable is onion, not “obviously, the tomato.” Soon after, he backhanded the mask clean off, revealing Copycat’s blank, marker-drawn face.
He sacrificed his summoned mechanical bull to The Box of Chaos and received The Arbiter’s Rings, which hobbled her attacks for a round. Copycat cut off the dew with a giant can opener (“Nobody messes with the dew”), and Ragu answered by becoming Super Ragu. He doubled his muscles and grew back about an inch of hair, then landed a nunchuck “right across the ear.” In the end Copycat beat herself. She held the can opener backwards, tripped on her own boot, and brought it down on her own “not face.” Ragu stood alone atop the keep while the crowd chanted his name. Afterwards, goblins brushed and shampooed what was left of his hair.
“Maybe next time you send me a human with skill and not a copycat, you can never be the real thing.” (Ragu)
Cosmic Collision
In S5E15 — Cosmic Collision — Teddy Oso v Ragu, Thea pulled Ragu back through a portal without asking and dropped him onto the orange rings of a storming purple planet in open space, opposite Teddy Oso. Ragu kept drifting off into the void and had to rely on his “gravity power” to pull himself back. Still, he landed early nunchuck shots on Teddy’s forehead and his bandaged knee. When a metal chair came hurtling out of the sky and hit him, Thea offered him a silver 1998 Chevy Impala as a prize, and he climbed inside before anyone could stop him. From there he took Teddy’s attacks from behind car doors that “were built to last,” and tried to run Teddy over with it.
Then Teddy’s axe came down “right in the areola.” Teddy pocketed the severed nipple. Ragu spiked his nunchucks, combined them into one for reach (“this is for my areola”), and mugged Teddy to snatch the nipple back. He found it had picked up hair from the shivering chinchilla Teddy had tucked into the same pocket to keep warm, while Ragu’s own chinchilla had frozen into a tiny ice cube. Ragu stitched the nipple on anyway (“Why is my areola so hairy?”) and traded the chinchilla hairs to the Box of Chaos for the Shield of the Golden King. Thea vouched for the hairs as “a clear, true Chilean chinchilla.”
The shield did not last. Teddy’s powered-up “nipple slicer” took the second nipple and shattered the shield “into a tiny million pieces.” Ragu fought on with nunchucks and the most annoying sound in the world, then made a last stand in his colorful boots. Teddy ran him over with the Impala. It was the furthest any fight had gone that season, and it ended with a slow-motion roundhouse kick to the jaw that cracked Ragu’s gorgeous manscaped face off its hinges. His body drifted into orbit and froze, “just like the chinchilla that he failed to save earlier.” In the after-show, his lesson for the Acolytes was simple: “Protect your areolas, man.”
Live at GCX Orlando 2023
At LIVE at GCX Orlando 2023 — Navik v Ragu (Prego), the Arbiter introduced him as “one of the filthiest, nastiest champions we’ve ever had.” Ragu faced the necromancer Navik in front of a live crowd he called his friends. His squatting fans out-voted Navik’s to win him the edge, and he took the first move. He opened with his classic “Squish Swash,” a front hand, back hand nunchuck combo, which Navik deflected with a raised hand; his next swing landed, flinging sweat that seeped into Navik like death. When one of his crowd helpers fell, Ragu ate the man’s leg for strength. He traded insults about Navik’s dead-man shoes, then tried and failed to rip off Navik’s hand and to bind his “ugly boots” with tree roots.
Navik raised the crowd itself against him: a freshly buried dragonborn, a skeletal centaur (“It’s Motaro”), a Hufflepuff who swept his legs, and six more in a villainous surge. The Grandmaster pulled Ragu aside with a secret to winning (“Stop fucking up, okay?”), and Ragu announced, “I think I just sharted.” The leg he’d eaten turned out to be fiber, and Ragu pooped out the Box of Chaos. He traded it his nunchucks for a small blue pill (“This should keep you going all night long”), which let him take one more beating than anyone else could. In the end his own friends were taken by Navik and turned on him. “I warned you, friends are useless,” Ragu lamented.
Down but not out, Ragu took a heroic surge and evolved from Ragu into Prego. He healed himself by crying and with “the power of Parmesan.” It wasn’t enough. He was killed by frozen wombat poop and raised into Navik’s undead army.
Personality and Abilities
Ragu is all swagger: a self-described “filthy, dirty animal with an instinct to kill anybody that gets in my way,” a “reckless walker” who walks “all the alphabets,” and a man who answers every setback with a fresh insult. He is vain about his “ultra silver” hair (“not blonde”), which smells of herbal essence. He is just as vain about his hard-won chest, his “prettier stash,” and his boots. At the live show he wore a basketball jersey he insists he bought on eBay, liked pink because he “saw the Barbie movie,” was hungry for chicken, and suffered from plantar fasciitis. At the live show he complained, “Nobody make me bleed my own blood,” a line that echoed his first-blood boast against Copycat.
In battle he relies on nunchucks: surprise left-hand swings, spiked tips, an exploding spike that scatters nails, and the two chucks joined into one for range. He is “a professional string dodger” (“It’s all in the shoulders”) and can blast foes with his “melodic voice.” His heroic surges have turned him into Super Ragu or, in his last fight, Prego. He also keeps bottles of acid in his back pocket. And he has the super whirlwind fart explosion, up to number five by his fight with Copycat; number four, he said, went to the person he defeated last time.
Relationships
- Prego: his wife, whose favorite vegetable is onion. They spent last Christmas in the Bahamas, and his dying words in space were for her.
- Copycat: the identity thief he beat and dismissed as “an artificial idiot.”
- Teddy Oso: took both his nipples, his car and his life, while calling him “Mr. Pizza Sauce” and “Mr. Marinara.”
- Navik: the necromancer who turned Ragu’s own friends against him and raised him into his army.
- Thea: hostess, occasional fart gun, and his loudest coach (“You need to say your name”).
- The Box of Chaos: traded him the Arbiter’s Rings, the Shield of the Golden King and a blue pill. At the live show, he pooped it out.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: gave him a blunt pep talk at GCX Orlando 2023. He told her he hated her before he died.
Memorable Quotes
- “I am a reckless walker… I jaywalk. I K-walk, I C-walk, I walk all the alphabets.” (S5E12 — Imitation Game)
- “You know what it smells like? Unwanted guests, poverty and regret.” (S5E12 — Imitation Game)
- “You done messed up the dew, now it’s forever.” (S5E12 — Imitation Game)
- “Yeah, I died to a fucking roadhouse kick. Tell my wife, Prego, I tried.” (S5E15 — Cosmic Collision)
- “This is a really shitty box.” (LIVE at GCX Orlando 2023)
- “So this is how I die… By my own friends… I warned you, friends are useless.” (LIVE at GCX Orlando 2023)