CAV: Sabretooth (CS) vs Luther Strode (ILS) VOTING OPEN

Bullets don't draw blood from Creed at all, especially when he has Adamantium. Luther can catch them in his muscles, but they still draw blood.

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In terms of cutting damage, thanks, all he has to do is protect his internal organs and Luther's gonna struggle.

In terms of blunt force tramua, he's taken a telekinetic beating from Jean Grey. She was totally incapable of putting him down even after hitting him with everything but the kitchen sink. He only lost because a young mutant messed with his equilibrium.

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He's also shrugged off punches from guys like Luke Cage without the metal coating his skeleton:

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He can reattach limbs:

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He can heal from having all his skin burned off his body:

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Against Wolverine, he took dozens of fatal wounds and kept fighting:

Even though (with enough damage to his organs) Creed can be dropped, it's still incredibly hard to do so. After all, he's shrugged off stabs to the heart.

He's held open large metal doors single-handedly.

He's torn through Spiderman's bulletproof webbing

He's broken out of rocks made of chain, made stronger by a mutant's power.

And he's broken out of steel chains before:

He practically makes a habit of doing this sort of thing:

He's even ripped out of metal restrains just by flexing.

He's out-reacted Wolverine:

It's been highlighted that (a properly written) Creed is actually slightly faster than Logan.

He's even moved faster than the eye could follow:

He's even caught Spiderman and avoided gunfire from Punisher. True, there was a bit of miscommunication between the two, but it's still impressive for Victor.

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And he's completely blitzed Punisher before:

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He's pretty agile, too.

I'm grouping Luther's healing and durability together since they tie in nicely together.

Bullets don't draw blood from Creed at all, especially when he has Adamantium. Luther can catch them in his muscles, but they still draw blood.

Fair enough. Luther deals in a different type of damage than bullets though, and his strikes are going to cause more problems than a handgun ever could. Just for reference though, bullets have nothing but a superficial effect Luther, as seen below, they just get caught in his muscles and he ignores them or pops them out:

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In terms of blunt force tramua, he's taken a telekinetic beating from Jean Grey. She was totally incapable of putting him down even after hitting him with everything but the kitchen sink. He only lost because a young mutant messed with his equilibrium.

The most damaging thing there was Victor being blown up inside a taxi cab. Other than that all Jean did was throw him through a glass window and throw a van at him. Luther is definitely capable of tanking these kinds of impacts and then some, although it is impressive.

For reference, Binder, another student of Cain who has Luther's powers but to a self-admittedly lesser degree, was blown up point blank by several propane tanks in an explosion which engulfed the best part of a mansion. He had large blisters and his skin was burnt but he was still standing afterward, so I have no doubt in my mind Luther can replicate this:

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He's also shrugged off punches from guys like Luke Cage without the metal coating his skeleton:

Impressive, although I'll get onto why Luther may have a better time taking Creed out physically than someone like Luke Cage. For this instance though - that was classic Luke Cage, and I'm not sure if his strength feats are quite up to scratch with his current incarnation, although I could be wrong. That also may be in part due to his healing factor rather than raw durability, which isn't the case with Luther's durability feats since his healing factor is controlled with his mind.

Luther has taken strikes from the Librarian at various points early on his career, and this is a guy who has battered through steel doors/vans with ease with his strikes:

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Although admittedly, Librarian has punched into Luther's torso before and visa versa - but this isn't because their blunt force durability isn't formidable, considering some of the blunt impacts I'll show Luther surviving later on. Students of Cain have the ability to see the weak points on the human body through "meat vision", which allows them strike weak areas for maximum damage results.

Even if Luther is maimed in some way, he is more than capable of putting himself back together. He just needs to mentally will his body to heal and it heals for him perfectly, as shown here when he's uses his own intestines as a rope to snap Librarian's neck, and then places them back in his gut:

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IMO this makes his healing factor superior to Victors, because where Victor's healing can be taxed over time, Luther's only depends on his ability to mentally command his body to heal - which is why characters like Binder have tried to shut his nervous system down before.

And if you think taking out Luther's brain or dismembering him is the answer, I'd think again, because when he faked his own death at the end of Strange Talent he had lost parts of limbs and a large chunk of his brain, and he still healed and escaped afterward.

Now, I'll provide some more healing feats for Luther and then counter the most important part of your healing factor section.

Like I mentioned previously, Luther's ability to heal is based on being able to communicate from mind to body. Even after having a neurotoxin shot into every nerve cluster in his body, intending to shut down mind-body communication, Luther pushed through in moments and got his nervous system working again:

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Which brings me onto my next point.

Even though (with enough damage to his organs) Creed can be dropped, it's still incredibly hard to do so. After all, he's shrugged off stabs to the heart.

Creed's healing factor can be taxed after a while because of the fact it's based on genetics. Luther's super powers didn't come from a mutant gene - they are techniques that have been taught to him and are based on one's personal talent, and going by Luther's ability to skip rope with his own entrails, I'd say Victor's vital organs are at more risk than Luther's. It's all in the head, mind over matter.

Even if Victor did target Luther's organs with his claws, Luther is capable of trapping Victor's hands/claws in his muscle tissue, stopping momentum:

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They are adamantium, yes, but without momentum Victor can't generate enough force to cut, and he focuses on slashing rather than piercing IIRC anyway due to the fact he's claws rather than a blade.

And while Victor is trapped inside of Luther, Luther can use his meat vision to target and rip out his heart or other vital organs, like so:

That should do for now.

I'd argue Creed has a sliiiight edge in strength.

He's held open large metal doors single-handedly.

He's torn through Spiderman's bulletproof webbing

Luther's strength feats are more based on his uncanny striking ability, which lets him target weak areas for maximum striking damage. However, I'll follow suit and show you some strength feats which are more based on lifting strength like the ones you've shown, to show that while Victor is a slightly stronger grappler, Luther is by no means far off of him at all.

Here Luther tears a large steel security gate apart very casually:

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And here, he throws a soda vending machine across a mall like a missile, which is extremely impressive given that these things weigh nearly 900lbs:

This feat could very well put him on par with Victor, but it should at least be enough to match your assessment that Victor is slightly stronger in grappling.

He's broken out of rocks made of chain, made stronger by a mutant's power.

And he's broken out of steel chains before:

This feat is a counter to the feats I quoted above and the other chain-breaking feats. "Binder" is a student of Cain who hunts other students who have gone rogue (people with Luther's powers). He has "bound" many students with specialized chains meant for trapping students, even including Cain himself who is said to be around Luther's level of talent.

He also bound Jack the Ripper with these specially designed chains, who was unable to break them despite his own impressive strength, which has let him create shockwaves and large environmental damage from his fight with Luther and break Luther's arm in two places.

Luther however was able to break free of these chains where all the others couldn't:

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While I'm sure Strode can duplicate many of these feats, I'd argue he can't perform all of them (particularly the webbing and blast door feats).

You were perhaps right, although honestly I think he's strong enough for Victor to only take a slight edge in grappling strength. In terms of striking ability and targeting weak points, Luther should be Victor's superior, which will allow for more effective punches and kicks, which means more damage to Victor's cranium and vital organs than Luther will receive in return.

First off, some fodder slaughtering:

And that was an inexperienced Luther, before his five years of experience. Later on he would refine these strikes into streamlined chops which he would use to cut enemies in half in one swift motion:

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He has shown an ability to target weak areas against skilled opponents too, for instance he has broken the Librarian's arm, gouged his eyes out and ripped his spine and skull off, as well as snapped his neck:

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Of course Luther can't replicate some of those feats due to the adamantium skeleton, but thanks to his meat vision he will know not to bother trying, and as I've shown he has shown the initiative to target vital organs and eyes, which will serve to disorientate and gradually wear Victor down.

I think that will do for a starter. The basic idea being that Creed is stronger grappler whereas Luther has better command over his ability to strike effectively for maximum results thanks to his meat vision, so his strikes will count for more.

It's been highlighted that (a properly written) Creed is actually slightly faster than Logan.

I believe Luther is slightly faster than Logan as well, due to the fact he has better bullet timing feats and has managed to keep up with Jack the Ripper, who's speed feats are incredible.

The Librarian, who Luther was able to match in "talent" after becoming more experienced, was able to casually dodge a high-calibre revolver bullet at the last second:

Luther has also been capable of catching and reacting to Jack the Ripper:

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And Jack's speed feats are ridonculous - he's massacred a mall of hundreds of people faster than any of them could reach the exit. But he didn't kill them. He cut them in a surgical manner leaving them all barely alive, not killing one of them. He even decorated them around the mall, and stuck them to walls for kicks, which is just insane in terms of speed.

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He's also casually bent around machine gun fire in a tight corridor, not getting hit by one bullet, deflected handgun bullets at close range casually, and instinctively dodged machine gun fire even though he couldn't see the shooter behind the door when she shot, and didn't know she was about to fire at him.

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So Luther being able to react to these guys on a physical level and grab/strike them should put him on par with Victor. His own bullet timing feats are also impressive. At the end of Strange Talent Luther's internal dialogue notes that he could "dance between" the bullets of dozens of SWAT officers, and to prove this isn't hyperbole in Legend Luther would go on to do this very feat against a room full of gunmen.

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He's even moved faster than the eye could follow:

To nitpick, it said almost faster than the mind can follow :P. Regardless, this is pretty stick-standard for street levellers, even peak humans, and Luther is no exception. On several occasions he has moved so fast he may as well have teleported because the eye couldn't see him:

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He's even caught Spiderman and avoided gunfire from Punisher. True, there was a bit of miscommunication between the two, but it's still impressive for Victor.

And he's completely blitzed Punisher before:

Between Jack's feat in the mall, and the fact he's been so fast that he can appear as nothing but dust to even Luther himself, I'd say catching Spider-Man is as good as catching Jack (or less impressive, given Jack's fighting skill).

He didn't blitz Punisher there, really. From what I can tell they weren't expecting Victor to have healed, which allowed him to surprise attack Frank while they were talking to him. Spidey also notes that Frank actually reacted in time for Victor to only catch some of his kevlar rather than his throat.

He's pretty agile, too.

As is Luther. He's capable of leaping so fast he may as well be flying (and he actually caught Jack mid-leap and fired them both into a wall), and he's shown a fair bit of agility when he's done things like somersaults, one finger head stands, holding someone up in the air by the throat with his leg, ect. He's probably even more agile than Victor, and as you'll see Luther is quite a flexible guy.

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His first showings of move reading are basic, he knew that his mom was going to fall a certain way which allowed him to catch a plate, and he hit someone with a dodgeball because he knew where they were going to go.

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Librarian tells him, hyperbole aside, that he can see "a thousand moves ahead" of an opponent, but at this point Luther can't use move reading on another student of Cain because he lacks experience.

However, after the Librarian tricked Luther into killing his own mom, Luther became more focused and capable as a combatant, which put him on Librarian's level and allowed him to read his moves and use meat vision on him:

When Luther fights other students of Cain like Librarian and Jack, they also have this move reading ability, which puts them on even pegging - Victor doesn't have it, which means Strode will be one step ahead. We've agreed that their raw speed is on par, so now with this advantage Luther will take the lead in reaction time.

First off, what is Luther going to throw, exactly? As per the OP he's been given a bunch of kitchen knives which he could use in melee or for ranged attacks, and when you look at the location of the fight there are plenty of little wooden/metal sticks/beams lying around, and lots of scrap metal. Likewise, this warehouse is supported by a bunch of wooden beams - similar to the ones Luther and Librarian destroyed in their warehouse fight, thus collapsing the building on themselves:

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As you can see the debris falling on them didn't bother Luther in the slightest, and more importantly, there was even more stuff to throw around afterwards. Here are a few examples of the kid's accuracy and why it will help him.

He throws beef jerky into tiny gun barrels very early on in his career:

He shows the ability to send numerous projectiles flying at a time:

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He throws a knife into Binder's eye, and then later on without even looking throws a knife into the other eye.

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And here's the best one: he throws two bullets into both of Binder's eyes faster than he can react.

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In the midst of battle Victor won't be expecting two tiny pieces of metal to go flying into his eyes, and Luther is more than accurate enough to pull this off. While Victor is blinded Strode can wail on him and target vital organs, increasing his chances of winning.

He shrugs off a powerful explosion by Boom Boom:

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Takes a beating from Ms Marvel:

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Takes an ass kicking from the 80-100 tonner Sasquatch and gets back up in seconds:

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Creed's no stranger to busting through brick walls:

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It's something of a hobby of his:

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He busted through a barrier meant to stop a damn elephant:

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Arguably his most impressive feat is knocking out Rouge, a bonafide powerhouse in her own right:

Sasquatch could move faster than Northstar could think (despite his speed not being proportionate to his reflexes, his reaction time would have to be at the very least peak human):

Yet Victor sidestepped him pretty easily:

Victor can also match Luthor's feat of blitzing fodder:

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VIctor's also avoided blasts from and blitzed Cyclops and later outreacted Ice Man to escape them both:

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Black Panther's feats are pretty well known, he's tagged Spiderman, dodged gunfire and repeatedly avoided and surprised Wolverine.

Not only that, but he's hurt Namor with his strikes:

Sabretooth shrugged off his bloodlusted assault and reacted fast enough to choke him out with ease:

(Read left to right)

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Creed isn't adverse to some good ol' decapitation himself:

His bone claws have cut Constrictor's armor, which could tank Danny's chi punch without too much issue:

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Killpower could fight the Hulk alongside Death's Head 2:

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^ Read left to right.

Yet Victor cut him up good:

This isn't even factoring in Adamantium, which, as Creed says himself, makes the cutting all the more effective:

And yeah, Victor has these himself:

He's tracked Spidey using his sense of smell:

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Can fight in total darkness using his non-visual senses:

He can know his opponent's state simply by smelling them:

He can even feel vibrations of an energy shield from behind metal and concrete:

Victor can do just that:

Prior to any upgrades, Victor healed from a headshot in seconds. This same sort of attack would take Luthor out of the game for longer, due to the nature in which he heals (his brain needs to send signals to the rest of his body):

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Wolverine has outright stated Victor's healing factor is better than his:

Keep in mind this was BONE CLAW Wolverine, who's healing factor was better than Adamantium Wolverine's.

BC Logan could have his organs liquefied by the impact of a car crash and said organ's would heal the moment after the crash happened:

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And he also withstood a barrage of Adamantium tipped bullets and came out fine:

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For the record, Victor's healing factor doesn't exactly fizzle out.

Take the Hound, a bio-engineered Mutant killer that could adapt to any power thrown at it:

And Victor went toe-to-toe with this thing..

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...for an entire day!

He shrugs off a powerful explosion by Boom Boom:

Now this is impressive, more impressive than Luther's ability to shrug off an explosion as far as I know. The only problem with using it as a feat is that Luther (unfortunately) doesn't make things explode with his punches, but rather busts them wide open like a knife.

Takes a beating from Ms Marvel:

And not very well, I must say. She hits him with a metal pole once and he's temporarily knocked out cold, long enough for her to stop a train and then have a conversation with the police:

Then when Victor wakes up and continues the fight, Ms Marvel notes that because of the fatigue she sustained from stopping the train that her punches are running on pure "grit" with no power left, meaning Victor wasn't tanking very hard punches at all. She then goes on to take him down by attacking a weak point in his neck repeatedly which knocks him out. Now, who does this sound familiar to? That's right, Luther! The guy who's power set includes the ability to target weak points on the body, including nerve strikes:

Luther has no formal martial arts training, so he must have learned techniques like this by fighting Librarian, Jack the Ripper and Binder - all guys who have used nerve strikes on him. He hasn't ever used a nerve strike in combat against one of them, but I put that down to the fact he is able to kill those guys via decapitation. When he realizes that he can't decapitate Victor because of his skeleton, it makes sense that he would opt for a new strategy involving nerve strikes to seal the deal.

Takes an ass kicking from the 80-100 tonner Sasquatch and gets back up in seconds:

Hmm. Can you confirm that it was only a few seconds? Because between the page where Sasquatch beats the tar out of Victor, and the one where Victor starts talking, there appears to be a missing page because of the fade-out dialogue in the second scan. Also, Sasquatch has moved away from Victor's body at that point. Based on Victor being knocked out by Ms Marvel I believe this is another instance where Vic has been knocked out for a fair bit of time before healing back into consciousness, which would technically count as a battles forum loss.

Creed will be able to stand up to Luthor's striking like a champ.

Outside of piercing strikes/stabs to organs and nerve strikes, I agree, although the same should be said for Luther. After having an entire warehouse collapse on him and Librarian he got up like nothing had happened and ripped the latter's spine out:

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And you only need to take a look at the sheer environmental damage being produced from Luther and Jack's rematch to realize just how hardcore their durability is:

They actually left the ground of the mall completely cratered:

And while I don't like to use reasonable inferences in my debates, it is definitely worth mentioning that Jack shrugged off being slammed into a crater by Luther, and he is a less durable than student than him self-admittedly.

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Creed's no stranger to busting through brick walls:

It's something of a hobby of his:

Not too shabby at all bro, although I'm more than certain Luther can replicate this and then some. At the beginning of Luther's career, before his five years of experience leading into Legend, he was throwing down evenly with the Librarian, who has punched apart reinforced steel doors:

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He busted through a barrier meant to stop a damn elephant:

This feat sounded crazily impressive when I first read it, but then I realized that it's actually a bit of an outlier, akin to Batman kicking through bazooka proof (a feat Spider-Man failed to replicate). According to Forge, the guy who designed the barrier, it was designed to stop a fully grown mad elephant. That's 10,000lbs, 10 tons, of stampeding elephant trying and failing to run through that barrier. I think we both know that Victor isn't consistently hanging around in that strength range, although the feat does certainly show the upper limits of Creed's feats depending on the writer.

Arguably his most impressive feat is knocking out Rouge, a bonafide powerhouse in her own right:

I'm gonna need some more details on this feat because I know very little about Rogue, although she seems very impressive from what I've heard.

Still, I think we're agreed on the fact that Luther's punches will count for more in this fight, even ones that are only oriented towards blunt force. I showed Luther merely goring fodder in my last post like an untrained thug, but after five years of experience he began vaporizing their entire skulls with a single punch!

I haven't seen Victor demonstrate this level of efficiency with a strike, and while his adamantium will protect him, he will certainly have his brain jarred every time he takes one of these.

While he mightn't hit harder than Luther thanks to his ability to see weaknesses, to say Luther will just shrug off his blows isn't accurate.

This I can agree with.

You bring up a good point about Creed's claws being caught in Luther's muscle. However, I'm not sure how well that strategy is gonna work.

Creed isn't adverse to some good ol' decapitation himself:

To be fair, that was some kind of insect-humanoid with a pretty frail neck :P

His bone claws have cut Constrictor's armor, which could tank Danny's chi punch without too much issue:

Not that this matters because Victor has adamantium, but Danny's chi is different from piercing damage, so it would make sense for Victor to be able to cut the armor.

Killpower could fight the Hulk alongside Death's Head 2:

Yet Victor cut him up good:

Read above.

This isn't even factoring in Adamantium, which, as Creed says himself, makes the cutting all the more effective:

Well, adamantium can basically cut through anything, so you won't have me calling it's cutting ability into question. However, there are two things I'll be calling into question.

1. Creed is likely to go for slashing damage more than decapitation or targeting organs, because as far as I can tell that's his usual fighting style, which makes sense given the nature of what claws are designed for (slashing). At one point Luther had been slashed all over his body by Jack the Ripper and wasn't phased in the slightest, which would be quite the setback for Victor considering while he's slashing away, Luther will be doing real damage with his precision cranium strikes and organ attacks.

2. Claws are only so large, and Luther's muscle tissue is massive.To give you some perspective, Binder shot some daggers into Luther laced with a neurotoxin, which are larger than Victor's claws, and despite going all the way in Luther's muscles stopped them:

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Now I have no doubts that Victor's claws themselves can cut into Luther, but Victor's fingers and hands would be caught by Luther's muscles, which would completely stop any momentum once inside. His claws would inside of Luther but Victor wouldn't be able to bring his hand back through the muscle tissue, or at least not without a hell of a lot of difficulty considering Jack the Ripper couldn't rip knives out of Luther's muscles (which are comparatively much better at ripping through muscle than Victor's hands):

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Prior to any upgrades, Victor healed from a headshot in seconds. This same sort of attack would take Luthor out of the game for longer, due to the nature in which he heals (his brain needs to send signals to the rest of his body):

That's more due to the type of healing factor, though, opposed to the potency. I mean, as I showed earlier, Luther can have his torso ripped wide open and use his intestines as a skipping rope, and then place them back inside at his own leisure, or even regrow limbs, just by commanding his body to do so. And he lost a bit of his brain and kept healing as seen in the autopsy report, so it's arguable if either of them have any edge in healing at all.

Wolverine has outright stated Victor's healing factor is better than his:

Keep in mind this was BONE CLAW Wolverine, who's healing factor was better than Adamantium Wolverine's.

BC Logan could have his organs liquefied by the impact of a car crash and said organ's would heal the moment after the crash happened:

And he also withstood a barrage of Adamantium tipped bullets and came out fine:

Both of those healing feats are impressive (although for the first one, it only said that half of Logan's organs were being damaged, not all of them liquefied, but I digress), but I can't say they are beyond Luther's by any measure, so Victor being a bit faster at healing than Logan isn't a game changer for this match up.

For the record, Victor's healing factor doesn't exactly fizzle out.

Take the Hound, a bio-engineered Mutant killer that could adapt to any power thrown at it:

And Victor went toe-to-toe with this thing..

...for an entire day!

In short, Vic can go the distance.

That is a highly impressive endurance feat, and it shows Victor won't go down without fighting. However, the day long fight takes place off-panel, and this mutant killer doesn't appear to have any notable fighting skill to speak of to compare to Luther, so I question how much damage it actually dealt to Creed compared to how much he would be receiving from Luther. Some of your previous scans have shown that damage like strikes to weak areas, bullet headshots and sheer beatings can temporarily knockout or daze Victor, so I think I'd be safe in asserting that Luther will be able to put Creed down after sufficient damage is dealt, even if he needs to rip out his kidneys a couple of times for good measure ;)

Remember Killpower, the guy who's striking could knock over and stun the Hulk? He stuck Sabretooth clean and it hardly fazed him:

Or, one of his Victor's most impressive feats - falling out a plane at a ridiculous height and getting right up to fight the Plague Dogs:

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He can always bight Strode. His fangs can pierce the skin of a Wendigo.

These things vary in terms of durability, but they're all bulletproof, explosion proof and Wolverine has some difficulty putting them down.

Him catching Vic's claws is a good way for him to get his throat bitten out. And while true, he can heal from this, it will leave him clutching his throat and will distract him long enough for Vic to use his superior strength to remove his claws and keep going:

Alternately, he can just rip through Luther's body some more.

Creed has a fight with Wolverine where he outright beats him by attacking his vital areas.

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Going for the heart is a favoured tactic of his:

And if removing Luthor's heart won't stop him, he basically states that going for the head (and thereby the brain) is the second best option.

Or Vic goes up against Hans, a super fast, super strong, laser vision possessing meta with a healing factor. Victor beats him after realizing he can heal, he goes for deeper strikes that damage internal organs:

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He's smart enough to figure out how Kitty Pryde's powers work and how to counter them:

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Plays possum against Hans to get the edge:

And he's not totally devoid of skill. He counters Wolverine's punch by elbowing his arm:

Has Luthor shown anything so precise? I'd argue Vic is slightly superior in skill.

In any case, Vic can get him in the position where he just isn't able to avoid anything. That was what he did aginst Han, he was too fast for him to contend with - got him in close so he couldn't do jack to avoid.

While you mention that headshots can down Creed, that was long before he received an upgrade:

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And another upgrade on top of that from his son:

For the record, Victor's had his sternum blown out and had that heal ridiculously fast so he could keep on going:

In regards to having his eyes removed doing jack to Creed, I don't think so. This a guy who practically gets off to Wolverine and himself ripping eachother to shreds, smiles when he gets stabbed in the heart and only gets mildly annoyed when he loses an arm.

His pain tolerance is damn good. He withstood an electric shock to his brain and spinal column for almost 20 seconds that was meant to shut down his body (specially his, as the caption mentions), yet it couldn't do that:

Remember Killpower, the guy who's striking could knock over and stun the Hulk?

Knock over and stun the Hulk... after Hulk had just received a several-page long ass beating from another character? I mean, let's take a look at the scans you posted of the fight.

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Page 1 - Death's Head (DH) punches Hulk, then Killpower punches him. The Hulk replies by punching Killpower in the stomach, seemingly unphased.

Page 2 - Hulk punts Killpower into a wall.

Page 3 - DH beats the living tar out of Hulk across several panels.

Page 4 - DH punches Hulk towards Killpower, and Killpower sucker punches Hulk, knocking him over. Hulk sits up and says "Grooooo?" seemingly undamaged but confused. Then, from what I can tell some psychics start mentally assaulting Hulk, which is what actually stuns him while he's on the ground, not KP's punch.

Page 5/6 - While Hulk is being mentally assaulted, DH and KP both attack Hulk.

So from what I can tell here, every time Killpower hit Hulk here, he actually did very little to him in comparison to the ass whooping DH and the psychics laid on him. Sure, he got some licks in here and there but for the most part all he did was get tossed aside by Hulk. There are panels where Captain America rocks Hulk or even Thanos with a shield bash but realistically speaking he hasn't done any damage other than moving the recipient. Call me meticulous, but KP hasn't shown a lot of real striking power here, Hulk or no Hulk.

He stuck Sabretooth clean and it hardly fazed him:

To be honest, I would hope Victor could soak that punch. Because if that had been a challenge for him I'd be scared to see the ass whooping Luther would lay on him. And I actually believe you've shown us some of the upper limits of Creed's durability, when Ms Marvel knocked him out cold with one swing from a metal pole. And this was Ms Marvel early on in her career - she remarked herself that she was surprised she could actually do what she did with the pole. She did go on and stop a train, but it seems like due to her earlier surprise that she hadn't ever used that level of strain before. We've also seen Creed knocked out temporarily by a bullet wound to the head. My main point being, Luther should be more than capable of replicating that type of damage to Creed's brain over time, unless you're suggesting one mild hit from Ms Marvel and one bullet hit with more force than Luther's punches over the course of an entire fight?

Or, one of his Victor's most impressive feats - falling out a plane at a ridiculous height and getting right up to fight the Plague Dogs:

Here's me being meticulous again - this is an impressive feat, but it's in the wrong category. Victor didn't tank the fall, he just healed from it very quickly. Here's a conversation between some eye witnesses looking at Victor's body:

Guy 1: Stay away from him. We need to call security!

Guy 2: You're kidding, right? What we need is a garbage detail.. I mean look at the damage. This guy's basically just a sack of broken--

Victor was obviously in pieces after hitting the ground, so it doesn't serve as a durability feat.

Even if those feats I posted in Round 2 don't do it for you, these more than make up for it. My point in the previous post still stands.

Your point being that Victor outclasses Luther in blunt force durability, right? After three rounds of debating the point of blunt force durability I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with you.

You've presented several instances of Victor purportedly tanking strikes from powerhouses or surviving ridiculous odds, such as the Jean Grey instance, Ms Marvel, Sasquatch, Killpower, ect, but none of these instances have amounted to much other than that Victor cannot take too many hits from these people, or that they didn't really hit him with much to begin with. On the flip side, I believe I've presented a very strong case for Luther to suggest that while he isn't immune to Victor's strikes, he isn't exactly going down after one or two combos.

More to the point, however, Victor is not that much tougher than Luther. Unfortunately I can't post as many new feats as you due to Luther's fewer showings, but I can reiterate why he's still impressive. Perhaps just as impressive as Victor, but at least not far off of him by any stretch of the imagination

Jack the Ripper, someone who is visually, self-admittedly and going by feats, less durable than Luther, was slammed into the ground hard enough to form a huge crater in the marvel flooring, and then be thrown around further - and it only made him angry.

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The Librarian punched apart a reinforced steel vault door pretty casually, yet, when he and Luther fought not only did Luther soak his best shots, but they collapsed an entire warehouse on their heads and got up after it instantly.

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Really, there is no significant edge in terms of blunt force toughness. Both of these guys can take serious impacts to the cranium and keep going. This fight is going to be decided somewhere other than their ability to take punches to the head. But if anyone has presented the stronger argument, I'd say it's me.

She had Carol Danver's power at the time. In the 1980's she was being hit by guys like Wonder Man and Iron Man. Solid mid-tier durability.

She's not any sort of herald, but certainly above street level. Given she could lift about 40 tons or so, I'd say her durability is somewhere around that mark.

I'm going to need some more substantiation for this one unfortunately. Not that I don't trust you, but I'll need some proof and context before conceding that Victor hits harder than Iron Man.

Strength doesn't necessarily correlate to durability - at least not in any kind of quantifiable manner.

And now, let's say you do prove to me that Rogue took hits from Iron Man and Wonder Man without losing consciousness. Wouldn't that only suggest that Victor, who is only slightly stronger than Wolverine, knocking her out is simply a low showing for her? Unless Victor has a consistent habit of knocking out people with her durability, it would have to be considered a low showing/outlier. Big claims such as this feat require an equally large amount of evidence to back them.

I don't see how this is totally outlandish. His high end feats has him knocking out mid-tiers like Rouge and his lower-end feats have him punching through brick walls. Doesn't that put the Median at the elephant cage feat? I certainly think so.

That's not how consistency works, though. You can't take a high end feat, and a low-end feat, and then say that Victor can do whatever is in the middle, because he hasn't actually done it. You need to show what he's capable of on a consistent basis, which is more akin to the brick wall/steel chain feats you presented earlier.

As far as I'm concerned, unless you can show me that Victor consistently displays 10 ton+ strength surpassing that of a stampeding elephant, or that he can knock out people with two blows that tangle with Iron Man, then I'll have to base my argument around your more realistic feats rather than these two.

Panther's strike had Namor expelling what looked like bile/spit/water, knocked him back and caused him to have a pained expression. While he isn't breaking his jaw or anything as such, just causing pain to someone like Namor is impressive on BP's part.

It was a bit of saliva coming out of Namor's mouth, and he had the same facial expression anyone would have after being punched in the face - discomforted. He wasn't showing any audible pain, and he was talking normally after the hit. Again, I believe this is another example of a street leveller punching a mid/high tier character and it really not amounting to much. Feats where actual results are achieved, i.e creating craters as an after-effect of brawling, or knocking a character unconscious, are much more reliable than pushing for a street leveller to be hurting someone who tangles with the likes of Thing on a regular basis.

In regards to T'Challa, he had just been ambushed so it wasn't like he was outright blitzed. He hardly even seemed to be taking Panther seriously in the first place. I've shown more impressive feats for Vic than taking Panther's punches, but I figured I ought to bring it up anyway.

I'm certainly not saying it's unimpressive that Creed took BP's best strikes, but T'Challa lacks Luther's striking feats. And to be honest soaking T'Challa's punches is likely one of the best showings you've presented.

Even if Vic is caught in close...

He can always bight Strode. His fangs can pierce the skin of a Wendigo.

These things vary in terms of durability, but they're all bulletproof, explosion proof and Wolverine has some difficulty putting them down.

Oh I have no doubts that Victor could pierce Luther's flesh with his fangs. It's just the theory behind the point you're presenting which is questionable.

Him catching Vic's claws is a good way for him to get his throat bitten out. And while true, he can heal from this, it will leave him clutching his throat and will distract him long enough for Vic to use his superior strength to remove his claws and keep going:

In theory, Victor could bite Luther's throat out while he's trapped inside of him. But let's look at the context behind the scan you posted.

Luther had just stuck his arm through Jack the Ripper's torso from behind. Jack then used his ridiculous flexibility to bend around and bite Luther's throat out. And Luther was visibly bothered by this. But, there is no evidence to suggest Victor would think to, or be able to replicate this in a situation where Luther had him trapped, for a couple of reasons.

1. Jack has meat vision, which let's him see the human body like he's looking through an X-Ray machine. He's also so knowledgeable on the human body that he can speedblitz hundreds of people with a kitchen knife and leave all of them just barely alive. Jack is also someone who has been used frequently over the decades to fight and capture Students of Cain like Luther, so he knows what can hurt them. This is power and knowledge Victor is evidently lacking, meaning you cannot assert he'd have the same success as Jack.

2. Following on from my last point, Victor doesn't know how to attack Luther's throat in such a manner that it would debilitate him. Librarian has been stabbed straight through the neck with a knife and it didn't bother him one bit:

So evidently, you need to attack the throat in a certain way in order to get results.

3. Luther has been in up-close situations like this before, and rather than have his throat ripped out or any other type of damage, he's demonstrated the ability to keep his opponent at bay with headbutts:

And other brutal methods like eye gouging:

And he can always throw in one of these to really mess up Victor's day:

So who really has the advantage here? Still Luther. He can beat Victor to a pulp in this very familiar situation.

Alternately, he can just rip through Luther's body some more.

To be honest, attacking Luther's throat isn't the best argument you could be using, and Luther has counter-measures for this type of attack anyway. If anything Victor wants to actually have a couple of arms at his disposal rather than being trapped inside the muscles of someone who is liable to rock your world while you're there. And I question if Victor can go further in. Once his claws break through Luther will start healing, which means the damage muscle tissue comes back and traps Victor's hand/arm, as it did with Librarian and Jacks' fists. If he tries to go further in he'll find it pretty difficult - especially while he's being pummelled.

Creed has a fight with Wolverine where he outright beats him by attacking his vital areas.

Eh, this is a strange showing. At first Logan is questioning Creed and has him dead to rights his claws pointed at Creed's chest. Then, Creed slashes Logan's throat which somehow leaves Logan reeling for the next few pages? That all it takes to hurt Logan? And then he starts mauling him on the ground while Logan is incapacitated. Putting aside the fact Logan's strange healing rate... this doesn't quite help your case until you can prove that Creed is going to get through Luther's muscles. Luther already has his meat vision, piercing chops with hands and kitchen knives which will allow him to go to town on Creed's vitals.

Going for the heart is a favoured tactic of his:

Nice. Now all you need to do is get through those pesky muscles before Luther can do the same thing to Creed's heart!

And if removing Luthor's heart won't stop him, he basically states that going for the head (and thereby the brain) is the second best option.

Not a bad play, but it won't be Victor's go-to method because he doesn't know Luther has ahealing factor to begin with. Then he'll target the limbs and organs, to no avail, get caught up with the muscle tissue, take a beating, and then maybe he'll start going for the head. But then what has Luther been doing all this time? Attacking Victor's head with high-impact strikes, going for vital organs, and overall actually getting somewhere in the fight. And need I remind you that going for brain isn't a surefire deal?

Say he scrapes a piece of Luther's brain off, in an ideal world - Luther healed from that already. In fact, after having his entire nervous system shut down in every major nerve cluster, he still managed to make the mind-body connection and heal.

He's smart enough to figure out how Kitty Pryde's powers work and how to counter them:

Not much to say here, it's a nice showing that shows Vic's intellect.

Plays possum against Hans to get the edge:

This shows a good level of cunning, however due to the fact all of Luther's rogues have been healers, and he'll have worked out that Victor is a healer, he won't fall for this. He didn't fall for it when he snapped Jack the Rippers neck, because he learned from past experience (snapping the Librarian's neck), that that won't quite cut it.

And he's not totally devoid of skill. He counters Wolverine's punch by elbowing his arm:

Has Luthor shown anything so precise? I'd argue Vic is slightly superior in skill.

That's a decent showing but it's certainly not beyond Luther who has done something similar to the Librarian's arm. More than that, I'd argue that the Librarian is a superior fighter to Wolverine in this incarnation, because, and mistake if I'm wrong, Wolverine at this point in time was more of an animalistic killer than the martial artist we've seen in recent years.

Here is Luther using a similar technique on Librarian:

And here's another showing of martial skill opposed to simply goring an opponent.

The former feat was actually very early on in Luther's career, so you can imagine the improvement he will have gained over time.

I think an important and somewhat overlooked aspect of Luther's fighting skill is just how capable he is of utilising his "talents" in the midst of combat, somewhat instinctively. For instance, in his final fight with the Librarian, despite the fact he's an inexperienced teenager at this, he still takes it upon himself utilise his own intestines as a weapon rather than freaking out about being gored.

There's also the fact that he developed a quick mastery over his dense muscle tissue, taking it upon himself to trap fists, knives and bullets in order to protect himself and hinder the opponent. All of which I've seen, so I won't scan-bomb you further.

Most importantly of all though, I believe, is the philosophy behind Luther and Sabretooth's powersets and how they use them. Luther has trained himself to become the ultimate human weapon. He knows exactly how to dismantle the human anatomy as efficiently as possible due to an inherent ability to target weak points and see through flesh. He can read your movement patterns, predict what you're going to do and then account for it with his own response. His hands have become knives and his muscles are a form of armor. Compare him to Victor, who has the same metahuman stats as Luther but none of the extras - he's an animal. A skilled, cunning animal, but primarily an animal. At the end of the day his primary form of combat is to maul the opponent and tear them apart, like his namesake would opt to do. Luther is more precise and gets stronger damage results because of it, going as far as to develop a knowledge of nerve strikes without any formal martial training:

So even if we gave Victor the edge in raw fighting knowledge because of his experience, it hardly transcends Luther's a natural ability to improvise with every tool he has at his disposal and utilise the same fighting techniques others have used on him.

While you mention that headshots can down Creed, that was long before he received an upgrade:

And another upgrade on top of that from his son:

For the record, Victor's had his sternum blown out and had that heal ridiculously fast so he could keep on going:

Hmm, fair enough although the second instance seems to be referring to strength, according to Sabretooth anyway.

Not bad, not bad at all. Luther's going to be blowing his sternum out a few more times than that, though, and with any luck rattling his brains while he's at it ;)

In regards to having his eyes removed doing jack to Creed, I don't think so. This a guy who practically gets off to Wolverine and himself ripping eachother to shreds, smiles when he gets stabbed in the heart and only gets mildly annoyed when he loses an arm.

Still though, the initial loss of sight will bother Creed somewhat - it's the sense he relies on primarily, and however pain tolerant he is there is still no ignoring that having a piece of metal or wood going through your eyes is going to hurt like hell. It's okay as a way to distract Creed but I can agree with you that it isn't a major factor. And on the front of Creed's heart, Luther does have a better ability to target vital organs than that kid, so with a kitchen knife he'd probably be looking to really ravage and dislodge the organ rather than stabbing it once and leaving it to heal.

BATTTLLLEEE!!!!!