Upon beating Roxanne in Rustboro City, the player meets up with Mr. Briney and gets taken to an island down South. This island is rather small, with a cave system, some beaches, and one human settlement. It's here, in Dewford Town, that the second gym leader awaits.

Well, he's supposed to be the second anyway. Brawly, the Fighting type expert and Dewford Gym Leader, is actually completely skip-able. Players can opt not to fight him until a while later in the game.

Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Omega Ruby, Alpha Sapphire

Brawly does not appear in the story of the generation 3 games. He is another gym leader that just stands on his mat waiting for a 10 year old to beat him up. Brawly looks like a surfer: wild hair, toned body and wearing some type of wetsuit. Fitting for an island gym leader. His gym is quite fun: it's pitch black and you can barely see a thing. Finding and beating trainers will gradually increase your field of vision, until you can find your way through the maze to Brawly.

In battle, Brawly uses two Pokemon, except in Emerald where he has 3. Similarly to Roxanne and her Geodude, Brawly always leads with a Machop. This guy gets stronger if you inflict a status condition, due to its Guts ability, so be careful. It and all the other Pokemon Brawly uses can set up with Bulk Up, raising their attack and defense by one stage each time. This makes them both deal more devastating damage, as well as become hard to take down. Once you get past Machop, Brawly sends out his signature Pokemon, Makuhita. It uses the same strategy as Machop, although you can status this one.

In Emerald, Brawly uses another Pokemon before sending out Makuhita. Meditite is another new Hoenn Fighting type that also has a Psychic typing. Cool that he uses two new Pokemon! Meditite is a very scary Pokemon if you're not prepared, as it can set up with Bulk Up, use Reflect and Light Screen to lower your damage, and offensively it has the 150 base power Focus Punch. The only way to safely beat Meditite is to keep attacking it, as Focus Punch will then fail. Otherwise it might just KO your Pokemon in one hit. Brawly's Makuhita is also stronger in Emerald. It now has the move Reversal instead of Sand-Attack. Reversal starts off weak, but the lower Makuhita's HP, the stronger the move becomes. It can spiral out of control fast after a Bulk Up or two.

After defeating Brawly, he hands you the Knuckle Badge. His gym also completely lights up, in case you were struggling to find the exit.

In Emerald, like the other gym leaders, Brawly will be available for a rematch at a few points in the game, gradually becoming stronger. He ends up using the three Pokemon from his gym fight (eventually fully evolved) as well as the three Hitmons (Lee, Chan, Top).

Pokemon Black 2, White 2

Brawly returns alongside his fellow Hoenn leaders to the Pokemon World Tournament. He can be fought in the Hoenn Leaders and Type Expert challenges. He uses a lot of the same Pokemon, though he adds the popular Hoenn Fighting type Breloom, on top of some others such as Heracross and Scrafty.

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Brawly is probably the most boring gym leader in the Hoenn region. He has very little personality beyond being a surfer bro, and you never see him outside his gym. He is barely even mentioned at any point in the game.

I do enjoy that they wanted to change his team a bit for Emerald and add Meditite, giving him two new Hoenn Pokemon. The cruel thing is that Meditite is actually unavailable in Emerald, making the player constantly wonder where they can obtain it. I'm not sure why they decided to do this, but at least Brawly got to show it off.

I doubt Brawly is ever going to get more content or backstory. I personally think the Hoenn cast is quite strong, but he is a weak point. If they were going to make a surfer bro gym leader, they should have made him like this dude: