Bakugo vs. Uraraka

Katsuki Bakugo tells Ochaco Uraraka to quit before the first round bracket closes on them, and means it. Izuku, watching with Tenya, explains that her only route is contact: touch him once and float him out. Her opening feint sends her uniform through the smoke as a decoy, but Katsuki's reflexes turn the ambush into another explosion, and she keeps coming anyway, absorbing blast after blast without retreating.

The stands turn on him. Someone shouts that he is being needlessly cruel to a girl who is clearly out of ideas, and Shota Aizawa answers publicly: the ferocity is the respect. Katsuki is spending everything he has because he has decided she is dangerous. Neito Monoma, of all people, tells his classmates to look more carefully.

They should have. Ochaco stayed low deliberately, letting his explosions chew up the floor, and kept attacking to hold his eyes on her while the debris she had already touched drifted up unnoticed. She thanks him for the attention, releases her Quirk, and the Meteor Shower falls. Katsuki answers with a single enormous blast that scatters the entire barrage and blows her back with it. She tries to rise, remembers a promise to help her family, crawls, and collapses. Katsuki wins.

He runs into Izuku on the way back and accuses him of scripting the fight; Izuku refuses the credit and tells him the difficulty was Ochaco's doing, not his. In the stands his classmates rib him for brutalizing a fragile girl, and he flatly disputes the adjective. Eijiro Kirishima then beats Tetsutetsu in the arm wrestling tiebreak and offers a handshake, which delights Midnight. Ochaco, healed and cheerful in front of Izuku, holds together until her father calls, and then the loss finally lands and she cries through his reassurance that she will be a great and caring hero.

Endeavor intercepts Izuku in the corridor to note his resemblance to All Might and to demand he push Shoto hard enough to build a rival worth surpassing. Izuku reminds him that All Might is not him, and that Shoto is not Izuku either. Far away, Tomura Shigaraki is told to watch these two boys closely and shrugs it off. In the stands Fumikage tells Ochaco to take encouragement from the coming match rather than sit in regret, as Izuku and Shoto face each other at last.

Ochaco Uraraka debuts the Meteor Shower, having spent the match baiting Katsuki into shattering the arena floor so she could float the debris above him unnoticed. Katsuki disperses it with a single massive blast and wins by knockout.

Eijiro Kirishima defeats Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu in the arm wrestling tiebreaker, filling the second round bracket.

Endeavor pressures Izuku to fight Shoto at full strength as preparation for surpassing All Might, and All For One directs Tomura Shigaraki's attention to Izuku and Shoto as future threats.

The twenty-second episode and the ninth of season two, covering Chapters 36 and 37 plus the first two pages of Chapter 38 in the U.A. Sports Festival arc. Japanese broadcast was May 27, 2017, with the English airing on October 13, 2018.

One staging change stands out: Midnight announces the arm wrestling result in the anime, where Cementoss calls it in the manga. The introductions Present Mic delivers for Shoto and Izuku run longer, as does the speculation between Tenya, Fumikage and Ochaco about how their match will go.

Newly added material includes Battle Trial flashbacks to Izuku and Katsuki, a visualization of the strategy Izuku describes to Tenya, commentary from Minoru and Tsuyu as the match opens, a shot of Cementoss repairing the ring, Midnight swooning at the handshake, and a conversation between Izuku and Shoto before their bout begins.