From how I saw TDW, it looked pretty clear that Kurse had the strength advantage against Thor. Or at least Kurse was striking strong enough to basically stagger Thor with every hit. Something even Hulk (IMO) was unable to do in Ragnarok.
Granted if we look at the advantages Thor had vs Kurse. Flight, powerful winds (that he never uses since Thor 1) and powerful ranged attacks, it should be a no-brainer for Thor to use flight+ranged to just attack Kurse from afar til her brings the guy down.
Tho, Thor at this time's most powerful attacks (via "feats") were his lightning-charged hammer strikes so it is reasonable to assume that he would go melee than flight+ranged against stronger opponents.
Breaking it down, the fight between Thor and Kurse was basically an opponent powerful enough to hurt Thor with every hit who managed to strike first and strike often, stagger Thor, separate him from his weapon and continually pressing the advantage, giving Thor no time to recover something every smart opponent would do IRL but is sorely lacking in movie/comics as ppl tend to give their opponents time to get back via monologing or via simply not attacking until the job is finished.
Overall, Kurse (by showings), at least did far better vs Thor in h2h than Hulk IMO.
Well also consider the fact that Kurse actually knows how to fight. If you pay keen attention you'll notice that Kurse is blocking Thor's punches something The Hulk never does.
And I agree, Kurse is stronger than Thor, but i would never put him as strong as Hulk.
Well, hit-to-hit, Kurse's punches were staggering Thor while Hulk would only toss Thor and annoy him in Ragnarok. I mean Thor's first hit vs Hulk did far better than Hulk's first hit against Thor (Thor was annoyed, Hulk was staggered and dizzy) in the arena battle (tho it was likely because Thor's hit was much better timed/aimed).
Kurse is definitely a much better fighter than Hulk tactically (dodges, blocks, uses environment to close distance, separates opponent from weapon and doesn't give Thor time to recover). Bear in mind that Kurse was able to deflect Mjolnir using his hands with his back turned (demonstrating awareness, reflexes and strength) something Hulk has never been able to do.
Overall, in terms of formidability (at least in relation to Thor) Kurse has demonstrated a superiority to Hulk at least.
Which is why I say -formidability- which is a combination of skill, speed, strength, overall durability, etc.
Strength is a hard attribute to nail down between Hulk and Kurse. There is no clear clear metric beyond how their hits affected Thor. But this can be explained away as Kurse being a better hitter, not a stronger one (or as McGregor loves to say: Precision beats power). However, in a fight, punch effectiveness matters more. I mean both managed to ground and pound Thor (as both managed to score clear direct hits to the face, precision matters much less here), with Hulk hitting even managing to do several double arm smashes while Kurse was stopped by Loki before he could do so but Thor was up almost immediately after Hulk pounded on him while it took him around 30 seconds to get up after Kurse's beating. In this ground-and-pound, Kurse is shown managing to hit Thor 7 times and Hulk hit Thor around 13-14 times including a jump-stomp.
Last edited by Nibedicus on May 27th, 2018 at 04:05 PM
Strength wise, again, is a tricky thing to nail down essentially based on what I outlined above. The only metric we can use is Thor and the ground and pound they did to him (w/c is essentially as close to apples-to-apples as we can get as skill is not as important when you get clear direct hits). Kurse's ground and pound just seemed so much more effective than Hulk's based primarily on how many hits Thor took from each and how long it took Thor to recover.
Getting impaled is a durability "feat". Kurse soaked it and kept going tho (another plus he has is that he can basically ignore pain/damage unless it does utterly-destructive damage like a black hole grenade).
Asgardian/Elf/Frost giant weapons are designed to kill Asgardian/Elf/Frost giants, however. It is hard to quantify the capabilities of such weapons because they are implied to be effective against the likes of Thor and others (for example, Loki's blades can stab Thor even thru his armor).
We've never really seen Hulk get stabbed with those kinds of weapons even tho he walks thru anti-armor jet canonfire like it was a gentle rain. So, I'm torn in this area. But if we simply use "feats", then Hulk has the more quantifiable high-end durability "feat" between the two.
What are the stips of this match? Which version of Thor are you using? There's already a Thor vs. Kurse thread made, unless this thread has unique stipulations then this is just redundant.
He didn't visibly "struggle" to lift the boulder (at least I can't see where he struggled as he lifted the thing) he did grunt as he threw it as he would want to put as much force into it to deal as much damage as possible (w/c makes sense as he wanted to hurt Thor) kind of like Hulk sorta-roaring as he thew the arena hammer at Thor. How they sound would be irrelevant here, if you ask me. So the boulder throw would be a poor indicator of Kurse's upper limits to his strength.
Again, we have an apples-to-apples metric, Hulk's and Kurse's ground and pound of Thor, where Kurse's came out much better.
Like I said, we never really see Hulk getting stabbed by an Asgardian/Elven/Frost Giant weapon before, so Kurse's poor performance against such weapons is not a basis to compare the two's durability. Although, if you ask me, I would def have no problem putting Hulk as the more durable of the two.
Overall, however, it is clear that in terms of formidability and using Thor as a metric, Kurse has demonstrably been better than Hulk. Call it a difference in skill if you want, but it would be an attribute that compensates for any other stats difference between the two to such a degree that it puts Kurse well ahead of Hulk against beings with Thor's capabilities if we go simply by end results.
Last edited by Nibedicus on May 27th, 2018 at 04:43 PM
Thing is, Hulk got the highest feat. We could speculate on Kurse upper limit, but in the end it would only be speculation.
Again, we could only speculate on the sword. I personally doubt such sword could even scratch Hulk. He was bouncing F-35 bullets in the end with 0 damage.
That is why we look for an apples-to-apples comparison. Which we do have. And in this instance, Kurse comes out decisively on top in punch effectiveness where skill is not much of a factor (as they were both getting clean, clear and direct hits to the face).
I will argue that such weapons were made to pierce high level durability (again, see: Loki knives piercing Thor). But again, I have no problem putting Hulk above Kurse in durability.
I agree. Kurse is more effective landing punches. Hulk is too clumsy and not a good fighter.
Need to notice that Thor was pretty much tired and weakened from getting ragdolled by Kurse. On the other hand, Thor was pretty fresh and focused in his fight in the Arena.
Ground and pound has very little to do with being clumsy or skilled, tho. Those are clear direct punches to the face against a prone opponent. If you are not bringing your full strength to bear during those, then your punches are just terrible anyway regardless of how strong you are (thus the difference in strength would be practically irrelevant).
Bear in mind that Thor was fighting Kurse barely 30 seconds (where he's taken 4 punches at that point and even had a good 13-15 seconds to recover on the ground before hitting Kurse) so fatigue may not be so much an issue here. In contrast, Thor has already been fighting Hulk for longer and he's already been kicked and puny god'd by the time he was punching Hulk.
Again, I have no problem putting Hulk's durability as greater than Kurse's but I will argue that the difference between the two is very slight if we use Thor's punches as a metric.
Last edited by Nibedicus on May 27th, 2018 at 05:29 PM
KMC Community Forums
May 27th, 2018 02:20 PM
