We know he's capable but we havnt seen enough of Urahara to see what hes got, especially without bankai. Though i can see him still winning with only shikai.
Again Urahara doesnt show much. Mayuri is the one everyone goes to for tech and meds. That thing he made that make you experience 1 second in 100 years, pretty impressive things.
Inventions: Gigai, soul candy, the breakdown sphere itself, hueco mundo portal, the sword-manifesting doll
Vs
All the freaky biological stuff he does to himself, Nemu (who does seem to be the most advanced gigai/mod soul in existence), zanpaku-to modification, the current variants of a lot of the above that Urahara did for other Shinigami's use.
Combat-wise, I think it's pretty much a given that if a captain can avoid or counteract Mayuri's cheats, they win. Urahara is likely able to do that. We know he can go HtH with Yoruichi fairly well and he came from a combat squad.
Originally posted by Demonic PhoenixAnd we know that based on........ What?
In addition to that, Mayuri is more geared towards being prepared before battle, whereas Urahara comes up with strats on the spot.
Urahara, other than a flashback where he had no time to prepare and which he didn't do much in, has never been in a real fight.
Originally posted by BloodRain
How powerful was Yammy then compared to others? I cant remember his fights before going 0th on us.
He had a fair amount of reiatsu, but pure brawn, no special abilities or finesse. Ichigo cut off his arm just with bankai, Urahara was able to shut down his cero and bala totally, and Yoruichi roughed him up too.
Though he was tough enough Yoruichi got bruises just from beating the crap out of him, and did break some of Toshiro's shikai's ice, so it does require a fair amount of chakra/and or tightly focused chakra to hurt him. His cero did seem fairly powerful too.
If he actually got into hand to hand, I could see him beating 8 or 9, but those two are more versatile, 8 could avoid him with speed or eye-blast him, 9 is more skillful when just copying Kaien, and with release is probably stronger/possesses more firepower.
Also by eaten a lot, even his non-released state can be stronger.
He was mediocre. He beat up Chad and Orihime (but this was before they trained w/ Urahara), did respectably against Bankai Ichigo, but on the other hand Urahara and Yoruichi beat him solidly, and then later Urahara alone did it even worse. Then Uryu humiliated him (had stupid prep for that encounter though) one on one.