- The AI of the tournament opponents is often far above the level of the adventure mode opponents
- You may have fallen into a habit of only using special moves, without realizing how powerful your basic combo can be
- The AI seems to be able to knock you further at lower damage than you are able to do to them

Above is the bot that I used to collect every tournament prize piece. You don't have to use these exact pieces, but they are what I found to be effective for this.

1. A part that gives you extra shield charge, allowing you to block for longer.

2. Parts that boost either basic attack damage or attack speed.

3. A third jump and an ability that helps you gain/keep altitude. These are for getting back into the ring. Launch, tornado spin, etc.

4. A vertical special attack (such as the uppercut) and a more horizontal special attack (such as pound) for knocking the enemy out of the arena after doing sufficient damage. I say to bring both directions as some arenas have closer sides or closer ceilings, which will make a certain directional attack easier to ring out an opponent with.

Lay into the enemy with your enhanced regular combos (excluding the blue/white punchy guy with the huge defense, you'll want to whittle him down with specials instead).

Block whenever you're about to come into contact with the enemy, or at certain angles/distances when you're fighting enemies with drill and teleport. The moment their attack or combo ends, lay into them. You can also block the missiles/damage mines two of the bots use. If they're close when you do it, it'll damage them but not you.

After you've landed a few consecutive combos, the enemy AI will attempt to block. Pelvic thrust to guard break and either get a few more combos in, or use one of your knock-back attacks to ring them out. You can generally start trying to ring out at around 150+ damage.

As your reflexes and knowledge of the AI's patterns improve, you can start getting more aggressive, attacking the enemy in the air, or during attacks with a long wind-up like the spinkick. My personal favorite was to get them to about 100-150 damage, uppercut them, then uppercut them once or twice more in the air until they've been knocked through the ceiling. Most enemy bots (excluding drill bots, unless you uppercutted them in the air after they'd already used their drill attack) can't handle that.

The biggest weakness the AI has is that they can't guard break, and they themselves guard for longer than is necessary, leaving them open to being broken themselves.

Good luck!