lets get the facts right first:
-iori, kyo and shingo were fighting magaki.
-Iori loses it and becomes Orochi Iori.
-Iori attacks Kyo and Shingo. from the looks of it, Iori wasn't tired. he was in riot mode and grinning while Kyo was facedown on the ground covered in blood. all seems to point that in fact the fight was fairly one sided.
-Ash appears and takes Iori head on.
-Ash wins.
a few years prior to this, Orochi Iori took on the entire cast of KoF97 and was finally subdued after a long time...with joint efforts by the likes of Kyo, Terry, Ryo, Kim, Athena and other powerful fighters. and still it took a long time for them to do so.
flash forward and we have Kyo and his incompetent dickweed of a student Shingo. All points to how, in fact, Iori was far from fatigued.
also the concept of fatigue is vague in games. most of the time, even right after fighting some freaking boss or soemthing, they always seem to be 100% for the next fight............unless its MENTIONED otherwise. this is what i mean by "trying to see a logical explanation in something that is not about logic to begin with".
before anyone says anything about Magaki, firstly i don't remember 100% if it was Kyo's team that reached him or did this Iori going Orochi happen while the semis between the two teams (ash team and kyo team) was going on. seems to me that it was the later, as it would explain how Ash just happend to come out of nowhere and face Iori. i think kyo's team fought Ash's, Iori went riot, Ash and team went on to face magaki, while Iori was pummelling Kyo and shingo, Ash returns and defeats Iori.
either case, Iori was far from cherrypicked. Ash is powerful, going so far as to burn the whole city of SouthTown only so he could toy around with Kyo. No hope for Ken, as much as i like him. Ken is destroyed🙁
~Sado