I somehow over come a brief moment of stupidity and bad luck to everyman my way to finishing the tournament (on my 3rd try of that battle).
In case you're wondering why my healing potion did nothing and why I attacked instead of healing with 1 HP at the end ... it's because Venom. Venom has the effect of poison, but it also has the effect of not letting you heal until you cure Venom. Since it would have taken two turns to heal my only option was to attack him and hope it killed him.