It's very easy to claim that Cap doesn't rely on his enhancements and that they don't have any reflection on his combat competency, or at least not as much reflection on it as his skills do. It's also complete nonsense. Cap has had his enhancements for 99% of his publishing history, and in every single example quoted thus far on this thread, barring the one from Steve Rogers: Super Soldier, he was enhanced. Discounting the role played by his enhancements and crediting every victory to skill is a deliberately blinkered position to take. His enhancements are ubiquitous, so much so that they fade into the background and are easy to take for granted. Doesn't mean they're not there. They always are. Do the people on this thread really think that his enhancements made no difference to any of his fights? That the attributes they granted him didn't matter one whit; that the capabilities to hit harder, move faster and last longer are utterly insignificant next to his skills, that Cap's track record against highly skilled opponents would be identical with or without the Super-Soldier Serum?
Are these same people aware that line of reasoning is just plain terrible? I mean, really, why would anyone seriously believe that? Because 90-pound half-dead Steve once took on a group of enhanced brutes and won? Would that same example not be dismissed as fodder for any other street leveler worth their salt? Because god knows street levelers don't regularly face those odds and crush them, right? What is that example supposed to prove, that Steve's skills ensure that his competency in combat remains stationary regardless of where his stats lie? Go ahead and make a 90-pound Steve vs Wolverine/Black Panther/Iron Fist thread and see what kind of responses you get.
Cap's fight against Iron Fist took place in the 70's, and Danny was already tired before that fight happened. The Iron Fist of today is about twice as skilled and, I dunno, maybe three times more physically formidable if you want to quantify these things. His fight against Black Panther wasn't a fight, neither of them actually wanted to fight the other guy. I notice no one supporting Cap here brings up the time he lost another non-fight to Black Panther in Hudlin's run as if that were definitive of his skill vis-a-vis another top-tier street leveler. Wolverine? LOL. Cap has never stalemated Wolverine in a legitimate fight against a Logan in control of himself and his abilities. Either Logan's deranged and fighting like a berserk animal because of plot or he's been beat up and his healing factor's severely depleted and he's still giving Cap critical aneurysms in that condition, or he's been through a multi-day long gauntlet and is already exhausted and ready to drop before Steve sneaks up and bashes him from behind, or Giant-Man shows up and spares Cap the ignominy of a losing battle. I've noticed this on plenty of threads, but Cap supporters seem to think surviving for 30 seconds against Wolverine qualifies as stalemating Wolverine, as if the cards weren't heavily stacked against Steve from the beginning in a battle against Logan. Cap's battles with Logan always have some amount of plot intervening because if the two of them ever had a serious, no-context fight to the finish, there's only one way it would end: with a 21-gun salute at Arlington. Do not delude yourselves into thinking Cap is going to come out of that fight in one piece.
That thing that really gets me every single time is when people try to justify Cap's equal or greater skill using Spider-Man as an example. Spider-Man hero-worships Cap. In the Civil War fight that everyone quotes, his inner monologue is literally worshiping the ground Steve walks on right in the middle of a fight. Make Spider-Man a Democrat, pretend he doesn't know Steve personally and give him his hardened Back in Black personality and deadly focus, he'll rip Cap limb from limb every single time. Ok, that was a joke, but only the Democrat part. But more importantly, people are using the fight with Spider-Man to further the position that Steve's skills aren't as prominent a factor in his combat competency as his enhancements are? Despite the fact that we've seen in very recent years that people with near-peak or peak human stats like Punisher can literally deliver multiple punches to Parker's face and they'll accomplish so little that Spidey won't even acknowledge they happened? If you really want to cite Spider-Man as a serious example, I'd offer to cite Batman beating the crap out of Aquaman and Wonder Woman with his bare hands, but that'll just stir up trouble.
The reason people say Batman is more skilled than Captain America is because Batman's skill is easier to prove than Captain America's is. Batman is more like Wolverine and Iron Fist when it comes to skill: all three characters have well-documented and demonstrated training regarding the sources, extent and effectiveness of said training. Captain America relies almost exclusively on statements from himself and other people, and the mysterious contributions of unnamed "private tutors" to his skill. To compensate for that, people bring up his fights with other high-tier street levelers and rely on rudimentary ABC logic to establish his level of skill. There is no statement about Cap's skill that hasn't been applied to Batman's skill a dozen times more often, and in greater detail, and to infer a greater degree of competency with the specific skill subset. Cap claims that he's proficient in nerve strikes? Nightwing will claim Batman knows every single nerve strike ever devised in human history. Cap claims to be adept at all martial arts? Batman will not only lay claim to being a master of all martial arts, he will display mastery of martial arts so obscure that only two other people on the planet have ever heard of them. Little things like that.
Bruce wins a solid majority. He is the more skilled fighter and Cap's enhanced physicals typically make up the balance. Take away those physicals and I don't need to hold your hand and walk you through it.
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