Machamp
Superpower Pokémon
It quickly swings its four arms to rock its opponents with ceaseless punches and chops from all angles.
Base Stats
Type Effectiveness
Held Items
Evolution Chain
Moves
Details
Sprites
Competitive
Strategy Overview
With Snorlax being the king of GSC, Machamp seems like a pretty good idea given its mighty Fighting STAB. However, it takes as much as 49% switching into Snorlax's Double-Edge, making it a shaky check for the big lug. However, while Machamp is a shaky Snorlax check, on offense it's a monster -- half of the Pokemon on most teams are weak to Fighting-type attacks, severely limiting what can switch into Machamp. Furthermore, a few teams do not even have a Fighting resist, allowing Machamp to steamroll these teams when it comes across them if it manages to OHKO Skarmory with a +1 critical hit Cross Chop. Cross Chop has a 20% critical hit rate after factoring accuracy, so going for the critical hit is a viable strategy and not just a pipe dream. Machamp also has decent 90 / 80 / 85 defenses, allowing an all-out attacker much more leeway to switch in than the similar Marowak, and permitting the use of a more defensive RestTalk set to tank mixed sweepers. Machamp does have its flaws, though. Its low Speed, Spikes vulnerability, lack of useful resistances, and good-but-not-great defenses make it extremely vulnerable to simply being beat down upon, and it's also often the victim of bad luck and PP issues thanks to Cross Chop's 80% accuracy, meager 8 PP, and dependence on the critical hit to break walls such as Skarmory.
Most Used Moves
Competitive data from Smogon University via data.pkmn.cc