A skilled street fighter named Bunshichi Tanba takes pleasure in defeating televised combat champions and celebrities in unsanctioned matches, but his winning streak comes to an end when he challenges a young professional wrestler named Toshio Kajiwara and loses. The humiliation of this defeat drives Tanba into years of intensive training focused solely on revenge.

After honing his abilities, Tanba returns to the fighting world and catches the attention of two legendary figures. One is Makoto Tatsumi, known as Great Tatsumi, the formidable owner of the underground wrestling organization FAW, the Federation of Amateur Wrestling. The other is Shozan Matsuo, called the Demon of Karate, the head of Japan’s premier karate school, Hokushinkan, who stands among the strongest fighters in the series and seeks worthy opponents. Both men want to recruit Tanba for their own purposes, pulling him into a brutal hierarchy of elite martial artists.

As Tanba navigates this dangerous world, he faces escalating challenges that test his physical and psychological limits. He also must contend with Juzo Fujimaki, a fugitive practitioner of the Takemiya Ryuu martial arts style who adopts Tanba’s name as an alias to lure out the real Tanba by defeating Hokushin fighters. Their confrontation ends inconclusively, setting the stage for further conflict. With Matsuo’s backing, Tatsumi arranges an unrestricted match between Tanba and Jyohei Tsutsumi, a formidable Hokushin student and deliveryman, which Tanba wins by knockout.

The narrative is driven by Matsuo’s desire to find worthy opponents. He organizes a major tournament through Tatsumi, offering the winner the chance to face him personally. This tournament arc is significantly expanded in the manga adaptation, turning what was a brief portion of the original novels into a sprawling multi-volume storyline that occupies nearly half of the manga’s total run and gives expanded roles to numerous fighters. The tournament culminates with Hiroshi Nagata, a pro wrestler trained by Fujimaki, facing Tsutomu Himekawa in the finals. Though Tanba is not the central figure of this tournament, his presence looms over the martial arts world as he continues to pursue unsanctioned fights against various masters, driven by his quest to prove himself as the strongest like a hungry lone wolf navigating the intricate and dark world of fighting. The manga ends on an extended hiatus, concluding in the middle of a fight between Tanba and a character named Murase Gozo.