Ra's al Ghul vs Shang Tsung

Shang Tsung FTW.

Shang Tsung would take Ra's Soul... besides that, they actually might be even in terms of actual Hand to Hand combat ability. It's Shang's Magic that makes this a Problem.

@king_saturn: Yeah if it were just H2H this'd be a tougher call

Shang Tsung stomps

Shang Tsung utilizes magic based attacks in his assault, and also has the ability to change characters. He would win.

I would like to think based on what I heard, that Ghul is a better martial artist though.

Your Soul is Mine.

@badazz: He really does look like Manny Pacquiao there

@nick_hero22: What do you have to say about this?

Shang Tsung is way too powerful. Magic, fire and soul manipulation put him well above a street leveler like Ra's.

Shang Tsung would beat the crap out of Ra's and take his soul. Ra's would only have a chance if he is given a weapon or something to even the odds.

Ra's Al Ghul is a better fighter, but I think that if Shang Tsung is going all out with his sorcery he might be able to give him a decent fight. I'm kinda hesitant to state this though because both Shang Tsung and Quan Chi were beat simultaneously by Kung Lao fairly easily, and Ra's Al Ghul has fought and held his own against much better combatants than him.

Hahaha.

Anyway, Fatality in Tsung's favor, easily.

I don't know if it's "If A can beat B then A can beat C" though. I mean Sonya beat Raiden early in MK9's campaign and Johnny Cage beat Sonya.

I don't know how anything I said boiled down to pure ABC logic? I simply stated that 1) Shang Tsung hasn't defeated any comparable fighters to Ra's Al Ghul or anyone of note for that matter and 2) Ra's Al Ghul has fought and held his own against better fighters than characters that have shown to be Shang Tsung's superior in combat. My argument never boiled down to Kung Lao beat Shang Tsung, so Ra's Al Ghul wins.

@nick_hero22:

I'm kinda hesitant to state this though because both Shang Tsung and Quan Chi were beat simultaneously by Kung Lao fairly easily, and Ra's Al Ghul has fought and held his own against much better combatants than him.

you said Ra's has beaten characters supposedly stronger than Shang Tsung and that Shang has been beaten by Kung Lao easily. My comment was that just because in MK one character has been beaten by a certain other character, that doesn't really mean that said defeated character is weaker seeing as how pretty much anyone can defeat anyone in MK if the story calls for it. So it's almost irrelevant

Shang tsung has better physicals and magical abilies, he is definitely beating ras

It's always so hard to find a match for MK characters. They're like between batman and spider-man in terms of power, and there aren't that much characters to fill that gap, which means they either stomp or get stomped in battles

We are talking about a specific condition for Shang Tsung's defeat which is Kung Lao's martial arts abilities. I don't see why we don't have a reasonable justification for assuming that Ra's Al Ghul who is more experience, more knowledgeable in martial arts, and has better showings in comparison to Kung Lao wouldn't be able to replicate the same feat against Shang Tsung? The reason that ABC logic is frowned upon is because it doesn't take certain specific conditions and stipulations that were pertinent to the results (i.e. hand-to-hand combat abilities) into consideration when trying to make an evaluation of a general expression. My argument wasn't merely based off his showings against Kung Lao (maybe....I should have elaborated more with my initial post), but against characters like Smoke, Liu Kang, Kitana, and etc. who have all shown that they are capable of besting Shang Tsung through the use of hand-to-hand combat techniques.This might not apply so much to Smoke though since he has a lot of smoke-based powers, but from what I seen cutscene-wise he seems to have a preference for close quarter combat like the other characters in his universe. If I stated that Kung Lao beat Shang Tsung, so therefore Ra's win would you could charge me with using ABC logic since that statement would be far too broad, but I point out that Ra's Al Ghul fighting ability would be enough to give him the win in addition to using Kung Lao as a benchmark while also trying to point out the disparity in Ra's Al Ghul's skills in comparison to Kung Lao's skills as a fighter. My position is far more nuanced then your portrayal of X beats Y, so therefore Z.

Give Ra's some prep.

Shang Tsung wins.

Evil sorcerer wins. He has strength and speed of a 1000 souls.he has comparable exp to Ra's. Plus he's shown himself a very capable h2h fighter,and is a very well versed in dark magic.

Shang

Goddamn I didn't expect Shang to get so many votes compared to Ra's. If it were just H2H Ra's would most likely win.

Especially when you consider that less skilled fighters have beaten Shang Tsung despite his own hand-to-hand combat skills and sorcery.

@nick_hero22: I want to see scans showing that Ra's is more powerful than those characters that've beaten Shang.

@modernww2fare: Love your classic profile pic.

That's more like ABCD logic.

A) Ra's = Bat family

B) Bat family > Kung Lao

C) Kung Lao > Shang

D) Ra's > Shang

i doubt that. shang tsung has the experience of all those fighters whose souls he has taken. he knows styles that ras has never seen before.

Nope, here is how it should look. Again, this isn't basic ABC logic because there are some conditions and stipulations that need to be met in order for us to arrive at the conclusion C > B.

If A can beat B, then C can beat B only if C is = or > than A.

A = Kung Lao

B = Shang Tsung

C = Ra's Al Ghul

@nick_hero22: what

This isn't a good argument because 1) Ra's Al Ghul has been around for much longer than Shang Tsung 2) We have no reason to believe that all the souls in Shang Tsung's possession were from skilled warriors (he could have easily taken the souls of non-combatants as well) especially when his main source of souls would have been the death warriors from the Mortal Kombat Tournament which is held almost every 100 years. Shang Tsung would have needed souls in between Tournament, regardless, if they were skilled combatants or not. 3) Despite, Shang Tsung's experience and longevity, characters who only have a small fraction of his experience and knowledge have been able to best him easily which should give you some valuable insight into his martial repertoire and abilities as a combatant.

All in all in terms of martial arts, Shang Tsung is lacking by quite a bit here and I don't think his sorcery is powerful enough to make up the gap.

Soul levitation b*tches!

If A > B, then C needs to be = or > than A in order to be > than B.

Batman

1)Ra's alive longer than shang? Probably but they are close.

2)he doesn't have all 1000 souls being the ultimate warriors, true. But his strength and speed of all those souls plus their memories. Strength and speed plus exp of 1000 ppl(along with shang's own exp) >>> strength speed of a person who has lived for hundreds of years. Exp of ras can be debated as a match to shangs but strength and speed dept alone ras is outclassed.

3)only reason why kung lao beat him coz in MK evil must lose, good always win. In comics you can call that PIS/cis(as shang although a great tactician is very arrogant n jobber, he underestimated kung to be weak so he didn't use all his magic/skill against him).

In an actual battle, shang stomps.

So shang tsung can indeed defeat Ra's as long as he doesn't underestimate the head of league if shadow

So it's ABC logic.

No, and I have already explained the distinction......."The reason that ABC logic is frowned upon is because it doesn't take certain specific conditions and stipulations that were pertinent to the results (i.e. hand-to-hand combat abilities) into consideration when trying to make an evaluation of a general expression. My argument wasn't merely based off his showings against Kung Lao (maybe....I should have elaborated more with my initial post), but against characters like Smoke, Liu Kang, Kitana, and etc. who have all shown that they are capable of besting Shang Tsung through the use of hand-to-hand combat techniques.This might not apply so much to Smoke though since he has a lot of smoke-based powers, but from what I seen cutscene-wise he seems to have a preference for close quarter combat like the other characters in his universe. If I stated that Kung Lao beat Shang Tsung, so therefore Ra's win would you could charge me with using ABC logic since that statement would be far too broad, but I point out that Ra's Al Ghul fighting ability would be enough to give him the win in addition to using Kung Lao as a benchmark while also trying to point out the disparity in Ra's Al Ghul's skills in comparison to Kung Lao's skills as a fighter. My position is far more nuanced then your portrayal of X beats Y, so therefore Z.", and "Nope, here is how it should look. Again, this isn't basic ABC logic because there are some conditions and stipulations that need to be met in order for us to arrive at the conclusion C > B.".

1) Shang Tsung has been around for a few centuries, while Ra's Al Ghul has been around for some millenia.

2) He doesn't get a physical enhancement in general from those souls, and he has to morph into those respective souls in order to use their abilities if they have any at all. Shang Tsung doesn't get their skills by consuming their souls either from what I recall in his fight with Smoke, where Shang Tsung morphed into Sub-Zero and Smoke told something along the lines that morphing into Sub-Zero won't give him his skills. I'm sorry, but I call BS in regards to Shang Tsung's strength and speed. Outside of gameplay mechanics and non-canon mini-games Shang Tsung has been portrayed as having the physical stats of a normal human when it comes to cutscenes in the game, while on the other hand Ra's Al Ghul has been able to fight both Batman and Nightwing who are the pinnacle of human fitness (they have the feats to back that up).

3) It's PIS if there are others feats that show the contrary of the feat in question, but no such feats exist for Shang Tsung. He was a punching bag for most of the cast in the game, and the only feat he really has is invading the Wu Shi Academy with a small army of Tarkatans and briefly fighting Raiden in hand-to-hand combat before running away. The terms PIS and CIS aren't really applicable to the video genre since creative teams don't rotate around unlike comics where different creative teams come in and out of different series.

Shang Tsung loses pretty soundly here, but if he utilizes his sorcery well there is a chance he could give Ra's some work.

@nick_hero22: I thought Ra's was 600 years old

Isn't he from ancient Egypt?

You are right though, I got his origin's missed up with Apocalypses origin's