Rick Jones vs Tony Stark (616)

[Shellhead]

Rick Jones (616) vs Tony Stark (616) in the Khazan Arena. No powers, no gear, no destiny force, nothing. Just unarmed combat. Who wins this?

[Beadle]

I feel like probably the much younger guy who has been Cap’s sidekick and is therefore used to fighting unpowered (and who has somehow survived in close proximity to Savage Hulk’s collateral damage radius for a long-ass time) is probably favourite here.

Assuming by ‘no powers’ we’re saying no Extremis etc. for Tony, which I think is what we’re saying here.

[Shellhead]

Yeah, no Extremis either.

Rick definitely got some HTH training and experience as Cap's sidekick, but that was fairly short-term. Tony got a little HTH training from Cap during the Demon in the Bottle storyline, but of course generally fights while wearing his armor. Still, Tony has so much combat experience as Iron Man that it feels like there should be some transferrable experience.

[big_adventure]

Tony is a decent fighter unarmed and unarmored. He's also, at least in classic 616, a fair degree bigger than Rick Jones, though that can certainly vary by writer and artist.

I want to say that Rick should be better unarmed given the milieu, but I don't know that he's really got the feats to back that up.

[MichaelC]

Even the origin story from, irrc, 268 shows Stark beating multiple soldiers at once while wounded with shrapnel, before collapsing from the heart damage rather than the soldiers. And there are flashbacks of Stark getting martial arts training during his teenage years. There's also the time Stark beat a school of sharks underwater. Overall he has a more impressive record unarmed.

[Tanrage]

Wasn't Rick actually actually adventuring as bucky for a spell? His best combat feet are probably from that era, anybody have scans?

[Shellhead]

Wasn't Rick actually actually adventuring as bucky for a spell? His best combat feet are probably from that era, anybody have scans?

CBR has some scans:

https://www.cbr.com/captain-america-rick-jones-bucky/

[Shellhead]

There's also the time Stark beat a school of sharks underwater.

Wow. I guess it makes sense that Tony could beat a bunch of sharks in hand-to-hand combat, because none of the sharks have hands.

[90'sCartoonMan]

Wasn't Rick actually actually adventuring as bucky for a spell? His best combat feet are probably from that era, anybody have scans?

During Peter David's Captain Marvel run, Rick had a hand-to-hand fight with Captain Marvel and did pretty well against him because of his training under Cap.