Logic Mark III says:
"Superman can only win if he has the super crappy power of DC writers behind him. In this fight he is dad. Gladiator is AT LEAST equal to him, but i believe him to be better and at his peak as stipulate here Superman is dead. Supes can fly around light speed, Gladiator can travel 100 times faster than light speed. He has survived an explosion capable of destroying half the Milky way galaxy and has destroyed planets with his fists. He is a much better fighter than Superman anyway he has a plethora of alien martial arts to draw upon. Every instance in which Gladiator has been defeated can be chalked down to a few things 1. He isn't really a hero so the laws of 'heroes always win' doesn't apply to him 2. every time he is defeated Marvel are basically shitting on Superman who he is a pastiche of and 3. Writers have come up with silly ways to defeat him in order to make other characters look good. All in all Gladiator taken seriously is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay above Superman, and would make that little Kansas boy his b*tch."
You need to put aside the the occasional 'idiot' writer at Marvel who does not maintain continuity, so that he writes Gladiator at levels way beyond his displayed capabilities in all his other appearances.
If Gladiator was to display these levels in all his appearances then the argument is a good one, but he does not.
The actions you describe occur infrequently (typically singular occurrences).
In most of his appearances Gladiator has shown strength at levels slightly above, but not significantly greater than those of Thor. How do we know this – because the 2 have fought and the result in their grappling was a stalemate.
We know that Wonderman was close to the strength level of Thor (old style measurements of 95 tonnes to just over 100 tonnes respectively).
However we know these old figures to be very inaccurate but they are useful as guidelines for comparisons between people.
To figure out how strong Gladiator is, lets look to a recent issue of Mighty Avengers. Wonderman stated that he is almost as strong as the Sentry, who by simple deduction must have a similar strength level to Thor then. Sentry was struggling to slow a plummeting helicarrier. The helicarrier reminds me of an airborne battleship and looks to be a similar size. A fully loaded battleship weights around 60,000 tonnes.
If this is what Sentry can lift and by deduction Thor can lift, then lets be generous and Say Gladiator can therefore lift 100,000 tonnes. Remember a figure to support this assumption is the struggle on Gladiator’s face when he was struggling to lift the Baxter Building when he first encountered the FF and the fact that he did not pop the Invisible Woman’s force field that she formed around his head.
If Gladiator possessed the power to move planets or destroy them, then Thor or any of the other adversaries he has faced would stand no chance against him.
These facts support the idea that his true power level is much lower than the isolated incidents mentioned.
If you want to paint a picture of Gladiator’s abilities draw the ‘good in with the bad’ and present a full picture, not a biased one.
Superman on the other hand is capable of lifting more than 2,500,000 tonnes. This figure was the stat published in the original Who’s Who of the DC universe. Since then it appears that he has got stronger, getting boosts on maybe 2 – 3 occasions (the most memorable one being the power boost obtained from the Eradiactor – but most of this was drained by the Parasite).
As you can see from the figures, Superman would appear to be at least 25 times stronger than Gladiator.
In the case of Durability, Gladiator has been seen on numerous occasions to be hurt by blows from his peers, like Thor and hurt by energy blasts projected recently by Vulcan (in X-men).
Therefore blows from Superman should easily hurt Gladiator as he appears to be much stronger.
Superman on the other hand has withstood a 10 Megatonne Nuke (but been Ko’ed by it) and has withstood blows from beings almost as strong as him without serious harm.
Would Gladiator's blows hurt Superman considering his level of strength ?
Superspeed is an interesting area for these two characters. By this I don’t mean flight speed but simply reaction speed and ability to move meaningfully and act multiple times in fractions of a second.
Superman has displayed this ability numerous times, showing the ability to catch sprayed bullets from over a large area or to engage multiple opponents effectively. In this, he can act like a ‘slow’ Flash – operating at literally hundreds of times the reaction and perception speed of a human.
Gladiator is meant to have some degree of super speed but rarely displays it. If he did, many of his fights would end a lot quicker. So in this, again it would appear that Superman is the more powerful.
Flight Speed has some differences. I think that below light speed, for acceleration purposes and the like both characters are probably about equal but Gladiator does possess the ability to upon reaching 98% of light speed, to enter Hyperspace and accelerate to FTL velocities. However in a straight up fight between the 2, will this really help – I doubt it.
Heat Vision – Both can project extreme heat from their eyes. Is one greater than the other – that’s unclear but we have seen Superman at maximum output slag superheavy alien alloys that were designed for space warfare. Without more info, I would tie them in this area.
Both have displayed the various tricks of super strength like icy breath, blow them away breath etc and as such I don’t rate these in to the discussion.
Fighting ability is very important. Gladiator is a trained fighter although he does not seem to have to call upon this skill much as his powers usually guarantee him victory.
Superman is not so skilled – he’s been coached by several skilled martial artists/fighters (i.e. Batman, Gangbuster) but this is at best only basic training.
Without doubt Gladiator would seem to be the better fighter but Superman has faced experienced fighters with vast super powers before and emerged triumphant.
Finally, Gladiator's confidence cannot boost his abilities - they are at a peak but his lack of confidence can reduce his power levels, as demonstrated in Fantastic Four. So when he has fought Thor to a standstill in the past he was at his peak but his power level can only go down - not up.
Overall, with the power levels displayed and their various histories, I can only see Superman winning this.
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