Vs
rules
in character
no prep
win by death or ko
Current thing vs pre core breach savage hulk
Let's look at Thing and Hulk's record since the FF came back together and Thing got restored to full power.
Immortal Hulk: Great Power - Spider-man gets Immortal Hulk's power transferred into him, Thing takes his hits and Does him
This is either clear bait or a horrible piece of evidence, considering that the entirety of Cho's run featured the concept that absorbing the hulk's power doesn't make you as powerful as him, And that's just a modern reference, almost any of the countless instances where an opponent copies or uses hulk's power would solidly debunk this. Hulk's power is his gamma, yes, but the level of his physical power derives from banner's own anger and negative emotions, whether he's holding back or not, and external factors of what's pissing him off.
Nevermind the actual fight has Thing taking a punch and a headbutt and taking him out in exactly two blows. Forgive me if I don't think this is applicable to Immortal Hulk's actual power. As you said, thus not combat applicable.
Fantastic Four #13 - Thing takes a 90 minute beating from a Devil Hulk arguably further amped on Puppet Master's rage and whose not holding back, yet KOes him eventually, albeit a double KO
I mean a 90 minute beating is accurate, and i'm not trying to take away from Ben's feat here, but Izaake's statements help quantify exactly what ben went through
So ben took 13+ attacks, a few of which were glancing blows, from an all out immortal hulk. But I think it's very telling the power levels aren't as simple as ben just randomly KO'ed him.
This is what happened when they started getting into actual fisticuffs
Gallery
In a straight up fight, Grimm could outskill him but he was at the end of the day outmatched. IH's casual hits were shattering his skin and badly damaging him whereas his best attacks only gave him a nosebleed and that's because grimm targeted it with a headbutt. And that was pretty consistent too, hulk would crater Thing with his hits whilst he would shrug off Ben's.
The only thing that kept ben in the fight was alicia, to the point where he had admitted defeat and was passing out if not for alicia.
Also note that it wasn't as simple as a double KO like with Cho. To take out IH for 1-2 minutes he sacrificed his arm (and it didn't heal back for 10 issues) and passed out from trauma for a week.
Empyre #5 - Takes an absolute beating from a not holding back, Celestial amp She-Hulk whose not far from Devil Hulk in power, maybe the same level with Coati stuff
This is more legit, but a hulk was beating the absolute shit out of him again (she even references how she's more focused that IH), until, guess what? He decided he was fighting for someone and got his second wind. I don't want to discount his willpowerforce ability but he always derives said power from something that he wouldn't have in a random encounter.
If you want to look beyond that in recent times
Secret Empire #6 - Literally the one instance of Thing looking bad, but as explained in Marvel Two in One, Ben was weakened due to being separated from the rest of the FF, thus not combat applicable
Sounds like a copout. Chronologically, looking at the Marvel 2-in-1 storyline and the whole powers weakening thing it's not as simple as FF splits up in early 2016, get back in late 2018, and over that time Thing gradually became powerless so any feats are unusable. Really Zdarsky's power level reduction applies mostly for Torch, who throughout the series couldn't sustain his torch power, and less so for Thing. Even for what applies for thing, it only really applies for a short time period before zdarsky's run, as the power level decrease is clearly exponential in it, considering within 9 issues torch and Grimm were completely depowered despite being over 3/4's their power 3 issues in. Also Khoul says that prolonged separation would do it, not just the moment they leave Thing's power level starts dropping.
Regardless, looking at Khoul's statement, at that time specifically (Early 2018), Thing was at 81% power. I'm just gonna get the reference for both Secret Empire and Moon girl out of the way. I'd agree that it's roughly applicable for Secret empire, since it was the latter end of 2017, but even then... that's like mid to high 80's percent of thing's power, and hulk 2 shot him. So... like a 3 shot? 4 shot? Not impressive even contextualized.
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is even worse, because we have a direct comparison from two in one to establish that Thing's weakness was inconsequential. Said comparsion coming from Iron-Doom, where when Khoul asks Thing if he's felt weakened recently, he basically says "yeah actually, i would usually mop the floor with doom" referring to his two conflicts in 2 in one where Doom casually bound him with magic and more or less swept him. Luckily, we have a reference for what he thinks he would do if he had access to full power, which is beat up doom. Which he does in Infamous Iron Man #2, where his fight with Doom had doom flee and repair his armor several hours later. Said fight is within one month of his Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur Cho fight. Both are over a year before Marvel Two in One. I don't think when Khoul meant recently or Ben referred to being unable to overpower doom anymore, either meant within a couple months of the FF splitting up.
Deadpool #27 - a battle between Thing and Hulk seemingly results in a double KO, this is also before Slott took over for Thing and made him a real powerhouse
This if anything is the bait. I find it hard to beleive that you're seriously gonna label this, followed by I kid you not 54 pages of Deadpool talking whilst the fight occurs in the background, ending with this scan "a battle between Thing and Hulk". Much less one with a double KO. Firstly, thing is nowhere to be seen, secondly considering that there are 50 pages of offscreen fighting, i find it hard to beleive that the one panel of thing fighting hulk before the perspective changes is all we need to say they fought and KO'ed each other (and then thing's unconscious body went somewhere else?) despite people like hercules and volstagg being there. The fight takes itself oh so seriously that it has deadpool decide to throw fisticuffs with Hulk. It's a deadpool comic talking about his bachelor party and all the girls he's married and had sex with man, come on. Plus the argument that Hulk only fought the thing comes from a single panel of them scrapping in a battle royale where there's also a single panel of deadpool punching him and him going for Hogun. Hercules or volstagg well could've gotten involved if we take this seriously, considering that Volstagg ends up passed out with his foot on hulk and Hercules's whole thing outside of stories focusing on his characterization is him getting drunk or mad and destroying things or fighthing in general.
Ooh, you know what the only other pre-slott modern thing fight between the two is? (discounting WWH where Thing got oneshot) Incredible Hulk #12, where Hulk beats Thing and wolverine so bad that they decide to never talk about it again.
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #14 - Thing Separated form the FF(Weakened) stalemated Cho Hulk, who himself stalemated "Pre-Core Breach" Hulk(who even says he doesn't hold back here) in his generations mini.
I mean Cho Hulk explicitly stops holding back against pre-core breach hulk in Generations. The air quotes here don't work either, considering that the generations fight was written by, y'know, Pak. Anyways, Cho Hulk not holding back is something that he explicitly does more or less every time, and he massively jumps in power (i.e. Dark Chulk). The whole thing with dark hulk is that he's his repressed power that Cho holds back all the time and formed a different persona. When he stops holding back (something he explicitly does even outside of Pak's world, like he did in Ghost Rider against Robbie Reyes, he's a different beast who initially would just roar and smash but eventually developed into it's own personality.)
Anyways, ignoring that context and the fact that he explicitly stopped holding back against Hulk and didn't do so against Thing, this if anything would seal the deal that this is a stalemate. Cho Hulk stalemated Pre Core breach hulk, and also stalemated Thing within the same year. Dust off our hands from the bait and move on our merry ways.
It's not even like Slott just had Thing do well against Hulk or anything, he had Surfer struggle with Thing in Silver Surfer vol 7 #2/3(which he gave Surfer planetary+ feats in btw), and he had Thing take an attack from Galactus that could split the mantle of the planet.
I mean I'm aware of this. I don't think that proves he'd outperform hulk either.
How does Hulk put him down? And I think saying "anger amping" neglects Ben's equally powerful willpower here.
With his fists. Ben's willpower is insane and it'll definitely make this fight a long, drawn out one, but his willpower, especially in his most impressive recent fights is contingent on other people and his desire to save them and not let anything happen to them. Without that, we get something like the Cho hulk fight where his willpower didn't play a part, as opposed to Bruce's ability to grow quickly in power over a short period of time which plays a part in almost all of his fights, and is also one of the biggest reasons Thing has a losing record against him.
I'm not saying Ben can't win and I think he can pull out a couple wins out of ten but imo it goes to hulk 6-7/10 primarily because of his strength increase.
Anyways, that's the actual fight stuff.
But sure saying current Thing beats a weaker version of Hulk, than most of the ones above is totally "bait, trolling, etc", especially since most of the ones above weren't holding back.
I mean what's totally bait is you misrepresenting feats and omitting context to make it look better for thing when you know better.
Now that's bait
>Kev
>Not baiting
Yeah I don't think it exists, I think Hulk got the same power creep as any other character, so I just treat this as Hulk without his recent power creep.
Eh, i'm sure you could make the argument about most other characters, and i wouldn't be surprised if it's contradicted in the future. But as of now, as we've discussed, the core breach amp isn't simple "i feel stronger than ever" or "i got back my power and feel stronger" that happens every 50 issues and is never said again. Planet/WWH is in many respects the most influential hulk story ever and it has more or less defined Hulk's power level since then. Hulk is not a character with a tremendous amount of mainstream appearances like superman. Post core breach, he's spent a good chunk of time in a canonically calmer incarnation (Doc Green) and been depowered (Loeb's run). Otherwise other runs have him separated from banner but give him some of his best feats earlier on (Aaron), and really only from Indestructible Hulk can you get a showing that would be inconsistent with the Post core breach status. Plus add in the fact that Pak came back with a run cementing the core breach status and Ewing is writing perhaps the most powerful hulk to date. Plus the fact that the whole worldbreaker moniker and power level stuck around and was referenced by Hickman, who also gave hulk some of his best feats, and Nick spencer in amazing spider man of all people. Pak made everyone think the hulk was stronger than ever and it's kept.
Tl;dr Pak wank lasts. Ewing wank refreshed the pak wank cycle. Hickman wrote OP characters so it didn't take away from the post core breach affair. Loeb wrote a powerhouse hulk when he wasn't depowered. Waid is arguable. Aaron gave him his best feats but also split hulk and banner. Pak came back. Guidebooks etc. He died for a couple years. Ressurections gave him great showings.
Tl;dr again He has the best concentration of good feats and lowest amount of low showings in the last decade or so when he's not dead or nul or whatever. By intent it's by far one of the more consistent "permanent amps" out there.
Funnily enough, maybe his biggest low showing post core breach comes under slott who had iron man survive a fight with an enraged hulk (referencing WWH) and his shields tank an attack that oneshot him.
It came out of a discussion about this sure, but it's a recent Hulk/Thing fight. It's not my fault you tried to make this seem better by saying "Actually it was Hogun and Deadpool who Koed Hulk"
It's a recent Thing/Hulk fight just like Incredible Hulk #12 is, and at least that one has them fighting beyond a single background panel. Not like I said that either, I just countered the idea that Hulk and Thing made a beeline for another considering Hulk fought thing on panel for as long as he did... deadpool and hogun. Thing is nowhere to be seen afterwards, and other people that could've fought hulk are there, plus i'm incredulous that this is a baitscussion because it's a gag background offscrene battle royale bachelor party over a game of poker where power levels were taken so seriously that deadpool decided to punch hulk in the face. Plus I'm pretty sure hulk in this time period was Doc Green.
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