I have never liked the argument that protege for all his supposed power in those scenes was greater than living tribunal but less than scathan... I'm sorry but I don't buy it. In the end though these are comics and the story comes before the facts...
But 1. Protege was a boy. He copied mephisto and beyonder then moved his way up...
2. If you take protege and pit him against himself... He copies all the powers of his duplicate and then it's a stalemate