Iron Man vs Luke Cage (with a twist)
- Fight takes place where WS/Cap fought Tony.
- Iron Man is in his Civil War suit, but no lasers, rockets or flight. He can use his repulsors and AI systems though.
- Luke Cage retains his own strength and durability, but gains Daredevil's speed, agility, reflexes, fighting skills, senses etc. He also gets Matt's "nearly indestructible" billy club for the fight.
Who wins?
Not really. Cap/WS barely managed to pull off a win together, even with plot on their side, and they are both better fighters than Luke (more comparable to Matt). Plus, no PIS/CIS here, so while Tony is limited in weapons, he is operating at peak mental efficiency (unlike the red mist he was in during Civil War). And no seemingly dislocated arm either. And, other than one instance where he shot a rocket at Bucky, Tony never tries to use anything more powerful than his repulsors/unibeam on either of them. So stips are fairly similar IMO.
Originally posted by Dreampanther
I'll be interested to see what everyone else thinks. My first thought is you've basically created a Cap on speed and steroids. Not only is he bigger and stronger, but a lot more durable and with enhanced ninja skills. In other words, the perfect warrior for H2H combat.
And when Iron Man started using his onboard AI (which he has access to here) to enhance his fighting skills, he disarmed Cap and put him on the ground in like 15 seconds flat. He had him dead to rights with his repulsor until Bucky grabbed his leg.
I look at it like this:
- Tony's Civil War suit appeared stronger than Steve, but not massively so. So I feel strength in this fight is similar.
- Tony is not the greatest fighter on his own, but becomes capable of going toe-to-toe with people like Cap, while having access to his AI. So he can use his suit to counter superior fighting skill. PIS off, Tony has also dodged things like tank shells.
- I'd say their overall durability is also pretty close, based on the kinds of hits they took and the comparative damage it did.
- And then, finally, Tony has his repulsors for range, where as Luke gets the billy club.
So I think that in a PIS-free environment, this match should actually be fairly close.
I agree with most of what you say, yet still think Luke has the edge here. With DD's abilities he can now dodge bullets so he should be able to dodge the majority of IM's attacks while shrugging off the few that do land with his super-durability, and as soon as Tony's suit starts taking damage he is going to lose effectiveness. One strategy, for instance, is that Luke can grab Tony's gloves the way Thor did and squeeze, thereby disabling his repulsors.
The repulsor squeeze rarely works. In fact, Tony uses said repulsor to break Thor's grip on his arm (by shooting him in the face), when he was squeezing it during their fight. At about 1:52 here:
And even the gauntlet Bucky squeezed with his metal arm in Civil War was still functioning without problems afterwards. Tony fires multiple repulsor blasts from it during the rest of the fight.
Fair enough - except that still doesn't solve Tony's problem of dealing with DD's enhanced senses and agility that will allow Luke to dodge his attacks. Not only will Luke be able to hear the conversation Tony has with his suit and know which strategy he's following, he'll be able to hear the repulsors charging up and dodge them with his new skills and agility while launching precisely aimed counter attacks with devastating force.
Originally posted by TheVaultDweller
That point about hearing the conversation is actually a really good one. I honestly did not think of that (I really should have though). It could certainly change things here.
Like I said, I think your idea of combining Cage and DD will result in a monster, a super H2H warrior who is nigh invulnerable, whose senses and skills allows him to dodge bullets (not that he needs to), who can hear your heart beat across the room, who is strong enough to punch through concrete and have been trained to defeat ninjas. In other words, a total badass.
I'm actually kind of jealous, I wish I had thought of combining the two...
Originally posted by Dreampanther
Like I said, I think your idea of combining Cage and DD will result in a monster, a super H2H warrior who is nigh invulnerable, whose senses and skills allows him to dodge bullets (not that he needs to), who can hear your heart beat across the room, who is strong enough to punch through concrete and have been trained to defeat ninjas. In other words, a total badass.I'm actually kind of jealous, I wish I had thought of combining the two...
Well, I still felt the toughness and abilities of the IM suit would have been a decent match until you brought up the eavesdropping point. Because Tony does often tend to vocalise his ideas out loud inside his suit, even when he isn't giving it direct commands. And Matt was able to eavesdrop on that one board meeting Elektra attended, all the way from the roof of another building, and was able to single out that police radio broadcast from multiple blocks away, despite all the noise in Hell's Kitchen, during the season 2 finale. If there is one area the MCU/Netflix writers certainly did not short change their version of DD in, it's his senses.