With an overpowered Skarmory, 1,786 attempts, and a dream, this streamer was able to beat one of the hardest Pokemon challenges ever made

gamesradar.com:

There are some seriously difficult Pokemon challenges out there, and one streamer has managed to overcome what's debatably the hardest of them all – a Kaizo Ironmon run – after a whopping 1,786 attempts. 

The rules of the Kaizo Ironmon challenge are far from straightforward – there's an enormous list of different conditions that you must adhere to if you want to take it on properly. For a start, you can only use one Pokemon, and if it gets knocked out in battle, you lose and have to restart the run. 

What's more, you can't fight wild Pokemon to grow stronger, and with a few exceptions you can't teach your Pokemon new moves via Technical Machines, so your opportunities to build an unstoppable force of a Pokemon are limited, to say the least. Oh, and all Pokemon – including those on opponents' teams – are randomised, along with their movesets, abilities and base stats. 

Streamer Smallant took on this brutal challenge in Pokemon FireRed, in which he started his winning run with a Lickitung, of all things. He was able to scrape through the first fight against rival Gary in Professor Oak's lab – which he noted was where around 75% of all Kaizo Ironmon runs are brought to an abrupt stop thanks to another rule that dials up the level of most enemy Pokemon. However, after getting past this hurdle, he had the option to switch Lickitung for a wild Pokemon, instead, which is where the saviour of the entire challenge, Della the Skarmory, came into play. 

Skarmory may not be the first Pokemon you'd think of as a challenge-destroying powerhouse, but it's a solid defensive choice thanks to being a Steel/Flying type that's only weak to Fire and Electric moves. In fact, in the third generation of Pokemon games, which FireRed is part of, Skarmory either resists or is completely immune to 11 out of 17 types, so there really isn't much that could get in its way. Smallant's Skarmory also happened to have the random ability Sand Stream, which causes chip damage every turn on non-Rock,