Regarding 3. - It only works if you already have three weapons equipped.As you've noticed, your melee attacks do paltry damage but the opponent can KO you in 2-3 hits. So the key is not to get hit.
Some tips I found useful:
1, Dodging is essential. When the opponent moves to attack, get out of the way by dodging then quickly close the distance to land 2-3 punches then move away. Stay too long in melee distance and eventually the opponent will land a hit.
2. If you can, go to a ripperdoc and equip yourself with gorilla arms. It does way better damage to your opponent then your bare hands.
3. There's also a way to cheese the fight by dropping a non-lethal melee weapon such as a baseball bat in the ring when the fight starts, then equipping it (as opposed to merely picking it up) and thereafter using it for the fight. Cheesy, but evens the odds. You're still vulnerable but at least you can now dish out the hurt.
I've tried that and it doesn't work, the game is actively trying to prevent you from having weapons equipped in these missions so if you pick up a weapon with R it will switch to another empty weapon slot to keep you unarmed. The only way to keep the weapon you pick up equipped is to have all weapon slots occupied so it can't switch to another slot without giving you a weapon you're not supposed to be able to use at that time.No, you can have nothing equiped. You just use R instead of F when looting to auto-equip.
Whats so annoying about this quest, is that while avoiding being hit... my punches hardly do any damage making the fight long and boring. lol It cant bring myself to finish the fight.
then get gorilla arms with any of the mods for dot damage, it will be much easier even with nothing in body on highest difficulty or even go to easy if you want, just do the back and forth thing, it will be slow but easy cause he won't go into any combo anymore he'll always try to do just that punch so you'll know what's coming.Whats so annoying about this quest, is that while avoiding being hit... my punches hardly do any damage making the fight long and boring. lol It cant bring myself to finish the fight.