I have to win the tournament in the Grand Master Fight challenge because only the Master of Tournament can defeat Dong Hou.

However, when I try to "Challenge Spar Tournament Contender" (who is Zhan Su the General Goods Merchant at the market). I can't get anything to happen and I have tried for many sim days with no luck at all.

From 6am to 11pm I get this: "I'm at work right now and I don't know when I'll be done."

And from 11pm up to 6am I get this: "Don't you think it's too late, try calling back in the morning."

He never seems to be at his home, The Rose House. I have become Best Friends with him, thinking that perhaps that had something to do with it, but when I click on him, either there is no "Challenge to Tournament" option or it is not selectable.

Can anybody help me or give me some advice please?

By the way, I am the highest Martial Arts level.

Is the ability to spar with him there? I think that is all I had to do to have it considered a tournament contender. I had to spar two times. Hope it helps.

No, that's the frustrating part. Either the interaction to Spar and Tournament Spar are there but not selectable, or they are not there at all when I am with him.

This is a bug in the default game, that you can get illegal tournament contestants that you cannot battle with, and therefore, are screwed. Only AwesomeMod fixes this.

Thank you so much for telling me this. I've been reading as many forums and trying to research this myself for over a week without any luck. I even asked EA and they said:
"After reviewing your request the situation seems to be more gameplay related rather than something we can resolve through technical troubleshooting or adjustments to your account details. We would recommend searching for answers through the games forums to see if other users have had similar trouble;"

But, it's actually a bug! I knew something was fishy. Well, just another reason to have AwesomeMod! As if there weren't enough already, right? I had to take all my mods out when I got WA and I have been slow to put them back in after having some difficulties with mods. My CC is operating well now, so now I guess I really can't live without AwesomeMod.

Thank you, Master Pescado!

-Ever your humble servant

Sorry if this is viewed as a hijack, but I didn't feel like making yet another sparring problem thread since this one is right at the top. I already have AwesomeMod installed and enjoy using it, but I still have a sparring contender who I don't get the option to spar with when I call her over, and I have no idea why. I don't believe she is a merchant, but I could be wrong.

daftalchemist, if you're able to call the person over, the problem isn't the same one MissySims20 was experiencing. Here are a couple of errors to rule out:

* Are you approaching the correct Sim? Spar contenders bring their entire available household (WHY?). Be sure you are trying to interact with the one named in the phone dialog.
* Did you accidentally call over the next-ranked chess tournament contender? Check the phone to see if "Invite spar tournament contender" is still available.

It was the right person, and I wasn't hitting the chess one by accident. I'm also not able to walk up to other martial arts students and challenge them without calling a contender first. I have no idea what's causing it.

If you can't spar with anyone at all (tournament or casual sparring), then you probably have a hack conflict. Please check the Game Help FAQs and stickies in the Game Help forum if you need help on winnowing out conflicting cc.

You'll want to eliminate cc as a potential cause. However, there are known skill glitches in the game. (For instance, if your Sims lose the ability to fish, you need to remove all special seeds from their inventory.) So if you are unable to identify any cc as the source of the problem, try emptying your Sim's inventory.

As this is a glitch and not a gameplay issue, any further troubleshooting efforts belong in game help, please.

I think it might be something to do with the sparring itself. I noticed yesterday that my sim (who just earlier in another game had been able to spar and challenge fine) no longer had that spar option at all. Thought it might be a mod conflict, so I pulled everything out - no go. I even spent earlier today completely uninstalling, clearing all traces of S3, and reinstalling. In a completely patched and vanilla game (not even the framework installed) I found that a single sim on vacation (Claire Ursine and Christopher Steel) could not spar at all no matter what their martial arts level or relationship with the target sim was. I tried taking the Roomies household on vacation, trained them all up to level one Martial Arts, and found that they could spar with each other but not the locals. I've tried for a ranked sparring match and was able to call the sim but the neither the 'Spar' or 'Challenge contender' options were there (only social interactions). I don't know if EA snuck in a patch of if they broke something with the last one and it's taking this long to show up.

edited to add: The sims' inventories have either been the books they defaulted to with a brand new game or been completely empty. I've also had this with and without static motives via 'testingcheatsenabled true'

As it turns out, the option didn't show up because my sim was pregnant and I wasn't aware of it (I use mods to make it a surprise, more fun that way etc), so now the option shows up but when I do it they didn't spar. I'll have to check it out some more later as I have to go to work, but thanks for the advice/help.

Yeah, that's another bug. I believe AwesomeMod should correct this and all other forms of invalid spar contenders, where you are assigned an impossible target, as well as the bug where you can ATTEMPT to invite your opponent, but every time you try, they always pop up with a "something came up" even if you can clearly see them in their house doing...absolutely nothing. The next version will fix it so that if this should somehow come up for an actual reason anyway, the opponent who refuses to attend will forfeit and a new opponent will be chosen immediately.

And if you don't want to use AwesomeMod, ENJOY YOUR BROKEN GAME.

I don't have AwesomeMod installed but I encountered a similar problem where every time I tried calling Deng Weng (I think that's his name), the next tournament contestant, he says something came up so he cannot make it. So instead of calling him to spar, I "tricked" him by inviting him out the normal way. Once we met up, I was able to challenge him to a tournament spar. Perhaps you can try this method

I know that this is an old thread but I wanted to share what I did to finally get the option of a ranked spar. I simply greeted the whole household that arrived with who I wanted to spar with and the option finally came up!! Have no idea why the entire household comes with them lol

ummm...ok,well,it kind of bothered me to do all that stuf,i'm kinda lazy 'bout downloading and instaling programs,so you can also do the next steps if you're having problems with sparing partners :
1.Hold SHIFT + CTRL + C ,
2.Type in : testingcheatsenabled true ,
3.Press ENTER ,
4.While holding shift click on the SIM that you can't spar with ,
5.Now you have bunch of options (you can release shift) ,click on object,
6.Now click delete.
If you invite someone to a sparing contest it shell be different person,although you can still call and talk to the person you deleted via the relationships panel,but non the less the next partner will be different and that's guaranteed.

I made a profile just because of this because i don't understand why would you go through all those problems...

Deleting random sims like that is a Bad Idea.

I found out that all the sims I wasn't able to spar with or to challenge just didn't have a high enough level in the martial arts skill, even the ones I called for a tournament by phone. I used Master Controller to raise it to 4 and then I could spar and challenge to a tournament without a problem.

UM, I think the poster is LONG gone as this thread is over 10 years old.

Struggling with the same thing years later, I've just found the info here very helpful. So, just in case any future people find this thread, there was no highlighted tournament contender option and I ended up challenging the champion to a routine ranked contest. After doing it twice, suddenly my sim was the new champion. Go figure. I did also make sure I was best friends with the entire family, who kept pitching up. No idea if that helped.