It's hard to not favor Khembish, he's the only one we KNOW has actually competed at this. That might put him at a disadvantage, if he falls into the "reads signals that aren't there because his opponent is too new at this to even be aware of the meta" thing? I think he'd still be very much able to hold his own though.
Themba, well, Themba is very large. Just an enormous heap of a man. Can easily picture him just standing there, arms akimbo, not even reacting as Luke or P shoves on his chest in vain like he's a stuck door.
P's principle advantage is that it's impossible to sneak up on him. Dunno what police/merc training he might have had, but in terms of sheer mass he's probably the smallest.
Luke isn't going to be able to resist the chance to feel his opponents up, and will be disqualified. To which he will respond "worth it!"
I don't know if Kota knows any Sumo or not. He might be grumpy about people assuming "just because I'm from Japan, therefore I must know Sumo? You are from America, Luke, do you know all of Dolly Parton's songs by heart?!" and that backfires because it turns out that yes, Luke very much does.
Robert's had so many "surprise! hidden depths!" moments that I think the swerve here is that he does not, in fact, have this one. He's never wrestled before. He has a desk job. The closest he came, I think, was debate club at Hell Law School.
Nikos is difficult. The rules say any body part other than the feet, and he doesn't have those. If he can compete, then the ability to wind up around someone, like he does to Asterion in the first encounter, has some real strategic possibilities. If not, well, MC can always summon him a referee shirt.
I could see Storm going in a bit cocky. He's young and well-built, and he might assume that'll be enough to carry him. I'd put him as the most likely to get fully owned by Khembish. On the other hand, he's lived on the streets for a while, he may know just out of necessity a thing or two about handling himself in a physical confrontation. I'd want him to wind up facing P, and then an attempt at a tackle puts them both on the floor in a compromising position, like within inches of kissing, and it's cute.
The Cobalts have their own separate division, and indeed get bored and begin wrestling with eachother DURING Khembish's attempt to explain the rules.
Wolf has no idea what's going on, but is more than content to play tug of war with an old sock he found if anyone wants to?
Asterion is probably the second most likely to have actual training, something akin to Pankraton. The difficulty might be convincing him to actually use what he knows and not just roll over. I could see using 'whether he's willing to actually compete' as a barometer of how much the MC has built up his self confidence to this point. What might be neat is if, instead of wrestling, he winds up with a version of that Cretan "grab the bull's horns and do a flip over his back" sport, from the murals?
MC I could see interacting with the event with prompts similar to the ones from the scene in the Deep Hotel. Maybe there's some background specific ones in there? Like, "Leadership" lets you play on your opponent's psychology to distract them, or "Arts" gives you the option to do a mock pro-wrestling promo, where you point at the sign on the front of the hotel (they love it when you point at the sign!) Nobody but Luke gets it. Luke thinks it's hilarious.