User blog comment:Darkcloud1111/Good Idea, Bad Idea~No Brakes/@comment-11188061-20141027143616/@comment-25436196-20141027180041

I was thinking the same thing about Yang's fight. If her Semblance makes her stronger with each hit she takes, her physical resistance probably increases as well, but the thing is: it works like a "special" gauge in a fighting game. If you hit her with enough strength, you could be able to hit a "jackpot", where the attack will be strong enough to surpass her increased defense, and maybe knock her out. The problem is that, due to the nature of her Semblance, the opponent needs to hit this jackpot in the first try, otherwise they'll just make her stronger. For example: when she was fighting against the Paladin, she took three heavy hits: first, she was hit by one of the mech's shots. Then she was pinned against and punched through a stone pillar. Now, we don't know just how strong those canons are, but they must pack quite a punch - not enough to knock her out, but just enough to make sure she had enough energy to stay awake after being pinned by the Palladin, which in turn gave her more energy so she could resist the punch. Torchwick was never able to get the finishing blow right, so he just spent the whole fight feeding her energy.

On the other hand, Neo spent most of the fight on the defensive, dodging Yang's attacks and launching a couple of light but well-placed hits, that were able to knock her down without giving her too much strength. She never gave Yang a chance to really fill up her energy reserves, which were probably a bit depleted already, seeing how she had been fighting for at least a while by the time. This means that when Neo threw her against the ceiling, she hadn't gotten to the point where she could immediately get up after that, resulting in her getting stunned for a couple of seconds. Yang may be stronger, but Neo had more technique, and that gave her the victory