Dias dies prettymuch for nothin. I realize he was gonna die eventually and he was saving Gau, but this entire fight was worthless cuz it wasn't even for anything. No one had any motivations to fight. We all realize what a mega badass Dias is and then he gets to die during Gau's training session. The whole time I was thinkin, wayda go Scarface...
Oh yeah, and going back a few episodes...can anyone tell me how Gau beat "G" when Elle couldn't even lay a hand on him?

Actually Dias doesn't die for nothing. He died saving Gau, which in itself is wonderful. Dias' death is used to show Gau what true power is, the will to never give up and overcome any odds. It is also used to show us why Scarface and everyone else treats him as a Sevaar, even on the verge of death he would face an opponent such as Darkness, then, even after death, he would defy and defeat him. The purpose of the fight is to show us, the audience, exactly how strong Dias is, even in a weakened state, and subsequintly how strong Gau can become if he fights as a 'shield' for another.

Noone had any motivations to fight? Gau had 'win or die' as his motivation, a pretty good motivation. If he wasn't able to overcome his fear of death as he had done as a child when his village was attacked and defeat Darkness he would die, plain and simple. Dias' motivation was basically to save Gau, duh. Elle fought, without any noticable effect, to save Gau as well.

I guess you could call it a training session of sorts... Scarface did get Darkness to trick then fight Gau for the purpose of teaching him to overcome his now latent fear of death after the fight with G. Scarface is doing all this for a reason, a good one that you'll learn about later. Dias was going to die soon so Scarface, being his friend, gave him one last fight believing it wouldn't be fitting for a man who lived through one fight after the other to die in his bed.

Now, as to haw Gau beat G... G's fighting style is pretty narrow minded. He'd defeat all his opponents in seven blows or less not because he could, but because he had to. It's true Elle didn't land one hand one him, but if the fight had continued she might have actually beat him. As Gau pointed out during the fight, "Althought the first blow was very powerful the following blows became weaker with each one." G was only strong enough to make the first blow incredibly powerful, after that he became progressively weaker and easy to beat. Gau beat him with stamina and will power, seven blows are meaningless if you can't beat your opponent in that many.

Time Limit or more precisely, limited power punch. :)

I'm curious about the end of of this. What's going on between Gau and Elle? Is she seeing him as more of a potential love interest or realizing that her younger brother is growing up?

My gripe was that all that stuff went down for Gaus training. I felt like none of that stuff "had" to happen, thus there was a lack of realistic motivation for the fights. I'm still at ep21 so yeah, I have yet to find out the siginificance of that training in the future. Not to be sarcastic, but I guess Scarface is a genius then if he was able to orchestrate everything that happened in that ep...

I think that the boy seriously screwed up by not completing his mission. Maybe it will all work out and Elle won't beat his ass for it. She did look a little pissed at the end taking out the main gates, but I guess she needed to charge up in order to do that. Gau could've at least fought that one guy instead of just watching.