Wolverine vs Deathstroke Pre-Flashpoint

[Pendaran]

What level is his healing factor at for this fight, since it, like his tendency to actually use his mad skillz and his claws ability to damage class 100 people and objects, oscillates a lot depending on era, circumstances, and writer, going from the extremely low end of taking any appreciable amount of time for his tendons to recover from Cap squeezing his wrists, to the extremely high end of recovering from a nuclear blast they left him a skeleton (though without damaging his pants, somehow) in a few minutes at most?

So, stuff. It's a hand to hand fight in which neither opponent gets anything from claws to gear. It seems like saying the word Wolverine is basically a reflex tap to mention "also he can cut class 100 bricks with his claws", but they're not even being discussed here.

More to the point, the idea that the nuke thing isn't so out there as to be why we have things like SMvFL, or the sort of thing Wolverine took an actual depowering from, but instead something that can just be proclaimed "it counts because I want it to" as long as you can do a successful ask for it, is certainly interesting. That you could use it to say "well it makes these other out there showings now reasonable!" instead of just being an out there showing of no worth whatsoever is pretty well off.

The standard of "Wolverine recovers from being skeletized in minutes at most" is the standard of "Deathstroke hits Flashes and outdraws Superman". In which case, Logan loses to lightspeed blitz, I guess, just to be consistent (hey, I'm being reasonable, after all, ftl is the "extremely high end". Therefore outreacting near light sorts is now moderate by comparison). Or hey, maybe the showings like that make Deathstroke being so fast he could toy with the Cassandra Cain Batgirl a legit moderate showing for him by comparison, and Wolverine can't hit him anyway (they do not).


Or.

"What level are Deathstroke's enhanced reflexes at for this fight, since they, like his tendency to actually use his superior abilities to hit FTL speedsters and outrdraw/outmaneuver the near light crowd oscillates a lot depending on era, circumstances and writer, going from the extremely low end of Batman being able to land hits on him at all, to the extremely high end of basically casually shanking a straight up demonstrably superspeeding Wally West such that Wally could not see the hit coming or avoid it?"

If we're going to have standards consistent with the ones in your post.


Barring that, Deathstroke's strong enough to do things like kick a steel door off its hinges and deform the door by doing so. Wolverine's tendons have the durability of tendons. If he crushes them, that's considerably ruining them, not "squeezing his wrist" as far as the downplaying. Captain America himself is strong enough that crushing Wolverine's tendons is more than "squeezing his wrists", instead of, you know, the thing he actually did. I'm pretty okay for some reason for a move like that impairing Wolverine long enough for Deathstroke to land other blows to other places unfortunate to Wolverine, like his neck.


I know this whole "Wolverine having any trouble at all with even Captain America is a ridiculously low showing and I'm going to imply he should really be more treated like some verging on Thing scale brick for what injuries should matter to him" is a fairly reliable stance from you at this point in Wolverine threads, but your usual "Wolverine's higher showings* are being ignored over his lower ones approach", as far as rolling that way in a thread with Deathstroke? Means nothing but that to be consistent with your logic for Wolverine getting lowballed, Wolverine is fighting an at minimum well beyond Batgirl's own reflexes meta brick, who he'll thereby never hit.


*which in this case seem to translate a lot to things like "anything below Wolverine coming back from a nuke is now reasonable".

[The Arbiter]

How many examples of not getting KO'd by blunt force trauma in excess of what a CBPH can dish out would I have to post before we start to accept that the guy probably can in fact resist getting KO'd pretty well by a CBPH?

I'll happily steer clear of anything involving class 100's and nukes or the like.

[MindofShadow]

Slade is moderately faster and stronger than all those. Logan gaining a second wind would not matter as far as Logan being dropped for a ten count, which here, is enough to be considered a win.

Can Slade actually hit logan enough and hard enough to knock Logan out though?

[The Dork Knight]

I believe the main reason Captain America (or Daredevil or BP) do so well against Wolverine is that they are generally portrayed as more skilled than Logan who is usually written as more of a tank

But Slade by his own admission gets by more on his stats than skill, just like Logan so he doesn't have the advantage other peak humans (seem) to have. If anything Logan has more "skill" feats, pressure points and the like

I think the stats advantage is not big enough to overcome the healing factor, considering how much trouble Slade had putting away Bruce. But then again Logan is, as noted, usually not portrayed as skilled as Batman

Could go either way, boiling down to stats advantage vs healing factor. I still think Logan has a slight edge, as I'm leery on Slade's feats of physicality being significantly better than Logan's while Wolverine's HF definitely is

[Pendaran]

How many examples of not getting KO'd by blunt force trauma in excess of what a CBPH can dish out would I have to post before we start to accept that the guy probably can in fact resist getting KO'd pretty well by a CBPH?

I'll happily steer clear of anything involving class 100's and nukes or the like.

How many examples do I have to post of Wolverine's flesh parts and organs having the durability of flesh parts and organs before Wolverine's flesh parts have the durability of flesh parts and organs?

Are you arguing that Wolverine has superhuman physical durability despite such things? And superhuman durability not actually being one of his powers?


Why is Slade limited apparently to just punching the guy in the face here instead of doing things like crushing his tendons, his windpipe, neck strikes generally, what have you?

[The Arbiter]

How many examples do I have to post of Wolverine's flesh parts and organs having the durability of flesh parts and organs before Wolverine's flesh parts have the durability of flesh parts and organs?

Are you arguing that Wolverine has superhuman physical durability despite such things? And superhuman durability not actually being one of his powers?


Why is Slade limited apparently to just punching the guy in the face here instead of doing things like crushing his tendons, his windpipe, neck strikes generally, what have you?

My point is, despite the ruinous harm that may happen to his squishy organ parts, he very seldom falls asleep or becomes incapacitated for a 10 count. I'm not arguing he doesn't take damage. Im arguing he stays upright despite it.

[Pendaran]

I believe the main reason Captain America (or Daredevil or BP) do so well against Wolverine is that they are generally portrayed as more skilled than Logan who is usually written as more of a tank

But Slade by his own admission gets by more on his stats than skill, just like Logan so he doesn't have the advantage other peak humans (seem) to have. If anything Logan has more "skill" feats, pressure points and the like

I think the stats advantage is not big enough to overcome the healing factor, considering how much trouble Slade had putting away Bruce. But then again Logan is, as noted, usually not portrayed as skilled as Batman

Could go either way, boiling down to stats advantage vs healing factor. I still think Logan has a slight edge, as I'm leery on Slade's feats of physicality being significantly better than Logan's while Wolverine's HF definitely is

Ehn. The stats advantage lets Slade do things like targeted strikes. This isn't "Slade punches Wolverine in the face and stomach a bunch". Wolverine being more skilled than Slade is dubious, and as combined with Slade being faster/stronger, that's going to let him do things like specific shots to impair Logan, that should do more than people without those capacities who have done the same.

[The Dork Knight]

How many examples do I have to post of Wolverine's flesh parts and organs having the durability of flesh parts and organs before Wolverine's flesh parts have the durability of flesh parts and organs?

Are you arguing that Wolverine has superhuman physical durability despite such things? And superhuman durability not actually being one of his powers?


Why is Slade limited apparently to just punching the guy in the face here instead of doing things like crushing his tendons, his windpipe, neck strikes generally, what have you?

Slade has a bit of a disadvantage going for specific stuff like that, finding weak spots through that adamantium skeleton while Logan can just straight up clobber him wherever

And also he can recover from the hits quicker.

[Pendaran]

My point is, despite the ruinous harm that may happen to his squishy organ parts, he very seldom falls asleep or becomes incapacitated for a 10 count. I'm not arguing he doesn't take damage. Im arguing he stays upright despite it.

The problem of that is a variety the showings that you would point to for that being the case involve his squishy organ parts not showing particular damage from a given incident, which make them more "Wolverine skating on not having relevant superhuman durability". You talk about stuff like "Wolverine hitting concrete", but unless a significant portion of him went gorily splat and that's what he laughed off, that's mostly.. a problem.

This is the problem of the "Wolverine can't be knocked out by anything less than.." what, Luke Cage? argument. A lot of it trucks in showings that themselves ignore that Wolverine does not especially have superhuman durability.

Guy has a neck he needs to use for breathing purposes, tendons he needs to use for the things tendons do, so forth.

[Pendaran]

Slade has a bit of a disadvantage going for specific stuff like that, finding weak spots through that adamantium skeleton while Logan can just straight up clobber him wherever

And also he can recover from the hits quicker.

That's my other thing, these are not especially fancy moves he needs to do, it's not like he has to execute some kind of precise analytical kata, just be somewhat faster. Wolverine's neck/throat/windpipe are conveniently not requiring finding adamantium weak spots. Or tendons, or groin, or..

While Slade may take some shots, ultimately getting into position for something like a chokehold while Wolverine is otherwise impaired is not really going to be impossible.

[The Arbiter]

The problem of that is a variety the showings that you would point to for that being the case involve his squishy organ parts not showing particular damage from a given incident, which make them more "Wolverine skating on not having relevant superhuman durability". You talk about stuff like "Wolverine hitting concrete", but unless a significant portion of him went splat and that's what he laughed off, that's mostly.. a problem.

This is the problem of the "Wolverine can't be knocked out by anything less than.." what, Luke Cage? argument. A lot of it trucks in showings that themselves ignore that Wolverine does not especially have superhuman durability.

Guy has a neck he needs to use for breathing purposes, tendons he needs to use for the things tendons do, so forth.

Hmm. I see your point.

Tell you what, I'll do my due diligence and examine the feats I have in mind to see if he was affected in the way you suggest he should be before continuing. I'll drop the point until then.

[Pendaran]

Basically for me this fight boils down to this:

1) No claws. This means there is only so much punishment Wolverine can himself deal out.

2) Slade has a stat advantage, and Wolverine is not as skilled as, for instance, Batman, even going by showings where he demonstrates skill.

3) Thereby, even with spotting Wolverine speed and strength parity to Batman otherwise (and I frankly.. wouldn't really do that first thing, Batman has something of a speed edge on Wolverine in my view as far as "differences between peak humans"), he's comparatively lacking in the third thing that allowed for Batman to make Slade have to work so hard as far as Batman's overall package o' stuff, and somewhat further behind than Batman is on the first thing (speed), and especially as far as "who hits who more and who will be able to do targeted strikes on who" is not a combination in Wolverine's favour.

4) Wolverine's organs and flesh parts have the durability of organs and flesh parts.

5) Slade can use having a stat advantage and not having to deal with a guy on Batman's skill level to then be well more comparatively able to get away with targeted strikes than Wolverine can, and these are not even fancy targeted strikes, just ones that leverage his particular enhanced stats and again, Wolverine's flesh and organ durability.

6) Wolverine will be impaired by crap like crushed tendons, windpipe, that sort of thing, certainly at the very least long enough for Slade to do things like overpower the guy, even setting anything else that could be argued for being done to Wolverine aside. Wolverine has to do things like breathe. Things like especially vital/painful areas getting crushed/pulped are going to be big ol problems for Wolverine.

7) Slade only needs a ten count. The Healing factor should not deny that happening.

[Pendaran]

Like if I wanted to be nonsensical I would say something like "While Wolverine is impaired from windpipe and tendon crushing, Slade pulls off some insane, Ringo Chen style punch up under the rib cage to the heart move, pulping it and getting his ten count that way". Nothing needs to be that convoluted.

(Ringo Chen from Hitman is bemusingly underrated, but then again we never really saw him do all that much)

[Sharpandpointies]

That's my other thing, these are not especially fancy moves he needs to do, it's not like he has to execute some kind of precise analytical kata, just be somewhat faster. Wolverine's neck/throat/windpipe are conveniently not requiring finding adamantium weak spots. Or tendons, or groin, or..

While Slade may take some shots, ultimately getting into position for something like a chokehold while Wolverine is otherwise impaired is not really going to be impossible.

This is something I can get behind.

I've argued that Batman would have a serious problem winning an MMA fight against Logan due to comparable speed and Logan not exactly being useless, skillwise (except those days where he is, in comics). Logan is going to shrug off the hits, Bruce is going to have a hard time landing precise pressure point stuff/vital strikes against someone with similar speed and close-to-his-skill, and Bruce doesn't really enjoy a strength advantage (and no, in that thread I wasn't saying 'landslide Logan!', just that Logan likely takes a majority simply due to Healing Factor/Adamantium Skeleton advantage).

Here, Slade has a speed advantage and hits harder than Bruce. His hits are going to impair Logan a little more (and be easier to land, thanks to the speed disparity), and being stronger (and faster) means it's going to be easier for Slade to grapple and then get a choke on Logan (especially after Logan gets punched in the throat or the like). Especially since he knows (common knowledge) that it's an uphill struggle punching out a dude with a crazy healing factor and an adamantium skeleton.

Logan CAN try stuff that's not legal in MMA fights to get out of the choke, but if Slade is choking him, then Slade is more in control of the grapple (additionally because Slade is stronger). Plus, there's nothing stopping the stronger Slade from doing the same thing right back (Logan IS going to be impaired if they get in a grapple, Slade wraps him up somewhat, then gouges out one of his eyes).

We have two guys with skill that's rated as 'high-end, but below the CBPH Poster-boys'. The difference is that Slade is stronger and faster. To my mind -- especially with knowledge of his opponent -- this means he's in a good place to put Logan down with the right hits and a choke (which bypasses the issue of 'Adamantium bones and healing factor').

Mileage may vary.

[Pendaran]

And eye gouges at that, yes. This fight does not require Slade to be the enhanced stat version of Ringo Chen is basically my note here, just to leverage the advantages that he does have, which he is certainly not dumb, so he should do. Overpowering a guy who you have first done things like crush the tendons of, windpipe of, so forth, is going to be in favour of the guy what did that. That Wolverine might get some shots in along the way isn't really going to stop those things from occurring. Even something even more basic like then landing more blows in sensitive areas while a guy is demonstrably impaired becomes well more easier.


With that said:

similar speed and close-to-his-skill

I would put Batman ahead of Wolverine in speed, and there is a definite skill edge to him there.