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Recap / The A Team S 3 E 16 Champ

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The A-Team comes to take a look at a boxer, Billy Marquette, in whom Face invested some of their money, only to find him crumpled on the ground, having been beaten up after refusing to throw a fight. The team quickly concocts a plan of their own, which involves B.A. posing as a boxer and taking Billy's place.

This episode contains examples of the following tropes:

  • Atrocious Alias: At the beginning of the episode B.A. is complaining about Face "wasting their money" by investing in a boxer, especially one being trained at a gym that, according to B.A. trains "nothing but losers." He then lists off several unknown nobody fighters trained at this gym, one of whom has the unfortunate nickname "Glass Jaw Hendrix".
  • The Boxing Episode: Face invests a substantial portion of the Team's money in a boxer named Billy Marquette, but in the process they discover that a local sleaze named Sonny Monroe is rigging boxing matches. B.A. goes undercover as an unbeatable boxer so the team can take Monroe down.
  • Casualty in the Ring: The team plans to replace Billy Marquette with B.A., who is posing as a boxer named Volcano Johnson. His cover identity involves him having caused this twice when he was boxing in Florida. They also fake him breaking Billy's hand and crippling him for two months, in order to give Billy a reason to drop out of the big fight.
  • Excited Episode Title!: The episode has an exclamation point on the end.
  • Friend to All Children: When the villains drug B.A.'s water during the boxing match the only thing that finally manages to motivate him to get his head back in the game is Murdock telling him he's going to let down the little kids who are rooting for him.
  • Parts Unknown: The ring announcer at the big boxing match gives this as the origin for Volcano Johnson (that is, B.A.). They introduced him to the villain by claiming he was from Florida, but they probably left it ambiguous when they registered him with the boxing commission, in order to avoid people looking too deeply into their cover story.
  • Red Baron: B.A.'s cover identity - Volcano Johnson. Many of the other boxers also have such names, naturally. At the end the team signs up Face to fight as "Dandy Dan" against "Butcher Murphy."
  • Slipping a Mickey: The antagonists drug the water in which B.A.'s mouth guard is rinsed when they realize that he has no intention of throwing the fight as ordered. Unfortunately for them, it makes him woozy but it doesn't stop him from beating his opponent.
  • Throwing the Fight: The villains of the episode are trying to pressure Billy into doing this, so they can make a killing betting against him, then use that money to buy a bunch of narcotics and get into the drug business.

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