Originally posted by aliveinboston
You mean after the Hulk savagely ambushed him and Thor was still subconciously holding back when fighting mortals? Given the number of times Thor has said the Hulk's strength matches his own it's fair to say he was referring to the resilience of the hulk who had just a little earlier been KOd.In fact, in a different fight, after Thor smashes the hulk and sees the hulk recover immediately Thor says "is there no limit to his strength". Lifting ability has nothing to do with resilience, endurance or speed of recovery so it's apparent that when Thor means strength, he isnt just referring to lifting capability.
We have seen that in actual tests of strength or in pitched battles Thor has no trouble keeping up with the hulk and Thor has also said many times that the Hulk's strength equals or almost matches his own.
In fact, we also see that when Thor is willing to cut loose, his strength keeps increasing so much that he is eventually able to easily take out characters as almost as strong or stronger than the hulk in pairs.
It's then no surprise that with just one-arm he actually killed both the Hulk and the Thing in the same fight.
The very same What IF series had The Punisher kill Spiderman. Would that ever happen? No, It wouldn't. I mean, come on, those stories are made for shock value mostly. Do you really think that would happen? Well, maybe to a non-pissed Hulk, but not otherwise. The other fight was in a Thor comic and defeated itself by having Capt. America being the only character to offer resistance. Also, killing the Hulk by impaling impaling him is a major sign of poor writing.
And ofcourse Thor has no trouble "keeping up" with him. He's a god. But in the end, Hulk always proves to be stronger. Thor has never phsyically defeated Hulk in anyway. The other way around, though..... Hulk smacked him so hard he just couldn't get up for a while. He can't kill him, obviously, but he did harm him. Why? Because Thor is stupid and arrogant enough to go toe to toe with him.
We've seen him increasing his strength? Yes. We've also seen the Hulk increasing his strength thousand fold in a matter of seconds. Point being? I mean, Thor will give Hulk a good fight, but he just can't physically beat him without PIS. The Hulk is Marvel's poster boy of raw, physical strength. Fact. Also, Thor is going to need a hell of a lot of physical power if he wants to wear down an enraged Hulk. He gave it his best(physically) in the fight with Mindless Hulk and it didn't do a single thing.
