Gogeta Blue's Strategy to Beat Broly Was Body Shots, Not Ki Blasts

The fight between Gogeta Blue and Broly in Dragon Ball Super: Broly (2018) was awesome, especially in cinemas. I wonder, though, how many people saw it and understood what was going on. It was a visual spectacle, with colors flying everywhere, explosions and powerful punches, but believe it or not there was a strategy underneath it. Look beneath the surface and you can see how Gogeta Blue beat Broly: what worked, what didn't, and how he suppressed the uncontrollable monster Broly had become.

My short answer is good old fashioned blunt force trauma, finished off by a move that attacked Broly from the inside, and it wasn't the Kamehameha that won it.

Gogeta Blue's goal was to stop Broly's rampage

Broly was out of control. It wasn't that he was a bad guy, but he was in a complete rage, and the entire universe was at risk of imploding at his power. Goku and Vegeta felt they had no choice, though it was mostly Goku, but to use the Metamoran fusion and become Gogeta. That began the final battle of the movie, animated by some of Toei's best.

The first thing to understand is that Gogeta's goal was to stop Broly from rampaging. When the fight started, Gogeta didn't go straight into Blue. The two kept powering higher and higher until they cracked the dimensional fabric and went into an alternate dimension. Within that world they went into their most powerful forms. For Broly, that meant full power Broly: huge, jacked, muscular and out of control. Gogeta Blue was calmer and focused on taking him out.

At no point in this fight was Gogeta Blue at risk of losing. It was more a matter of trying to control Broly, because his power could have had dangerous consequences for the world. Broly kept getting stronger as he fought, which Vegeta mentions earlier in the movie when he notes that Broly learns and improves as he fights. So Gogeta had to figure out a way to beat him.

Why Gogeta's ki attacks didn't work on Broly

For most of the fight, Gogeta tries to stop Broly with ki attacks. He uses ki against Broly several times in this fight, and once the two emerge from the alternate dimension and the battle continues on the ground, he's still using ki to try to nullify Broly. Everything he throws, Broly keeps coming back. Gogeta fires clusters of ki, then finally uses the Stardust Breaker, the Soul Punisher. Broly still comes back with a huge scream, and he's still in the fight.

At that point Gogeta needs to put him down and knock him out before someone gets hurt, so his strategy changes. The energy attacks weren't working because Broly is a fighter who pushes energy out of every pore of his body. He's unique in that his rage gives him power, and when he's raging there's constant energy flowing out of him. I'm not going to say it's endless, but his supply of energy is very, very high.

Because of that, Gogeta realized energy wasn't going to work on Broly, at least from the outside. But what if he could nullify Broly from the inside out? That's when the real strategy kicked in.

Gogeta Blue switches to power punches to Broly's body

The first thing Gogeta did was switch from long range attacks to up close power punches to the gut. This was blunt force trauma, like in the sixth Rocky film. The idea was to hit Broly with shots that would hurt him instead of fighting at range. To do that, Gogeta first had to get on the inside, which he did with that awesome move where he skids around Broly's energy to land a punch.

We see this numerous times, with Gogeta coming in across several scenes and putting all of his energy into humongous shots to Broly's gut and face, but mostly working the body. For anyone who doesn't know about real world fighting, the body is a crucial target. Yes, you can knock someone out with a shot to the face, but the body is where the vital organs are, like the liver. Liver punches are said to be the most painful shots you can take in any combat sport.

So Gogeta keeps pounding Broly's stomach, drawing all the way back with tremendous energy and hitting him over and over again. He does it because, as I explained above, energy attacks weren't going to work on Broly. Once Gogeta felt confident that Broly's midsection, his solar plexus and gut, was injured enough, he moved in for the final victory.

I do believe this was done on purpose as a throwback or tribute to the original Broly movie, where Goku was able to punch Broly in the gut to beat him. I think it was similar to that.

The stardust exploder is the move that beat Broly

After weakening Broly's midsection with several shots, Gogeta used a maneuver called the stardust exploder, and that's the technique that defeated Broly. Before it, Gogeta does a flip kick, a backflip kick like what Guile would do in Street Fighter, to knock Broly up. That's the perfect setup. Then he puts his arms forward in a cross position and puts them up.

The move uses ki from inside Broly. Gogeta manipulates the particles in Broly's midsection so they explode from the inside out, and in the scene you can see the explosions happening from the inside out. He somehow manages to blast Broly by driving energy into that specific spot in the center of his body. Shortly after this, Whis says the fight is coming to an end. He knew that was it.

Broly's pupils show the fight was over before the Kamehameha

As Gogeta sets up the final Kamehameha, we knew this would be the end for Broly. Then Cheelai makes the wish to warp him back to Vampa, and he's spared. But notice that right before the Kamehameha hits, there's a close up of Broly's face, and his pupils are back. When he was raging, he had no pupils.

That's because Broly was out of his rage form. He was powering down and losing energy at a rapid rate, because Gogeta put the hurting bombs on him with those body shots and then finished with the stardust exploder. It wasn't the Kamehameha. The stardust exploder is the move that gave Gogeta the victory and saved the planet from Broly's madness. Go back to the movie and you'll see that I'm right.