CaV: Deckard Shaw (Subline) vs CW Oliver Queen (SG)

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Like I said Oliver might have a strength advantage here, but it's not large, and Shaw has contended with physically superior opponents without much issue.

• Shaw can ragdoll grown men with one hand.
• Pushes a guard through a closed door.
• Knocks down a guard by throwing a shotgun at him.
• Matches Toretto in a clash, who can lift cars.

To start off, we've seen Shaw ragdoll guards in riot gear casually on two occasions.

Hobbs / Dom Scaling:

Now if we use scaling, we can deduce that Shaw hits similarly hard to Hobbs & Dom who both hit considerably harder than Oliver does.

• In his fight against Hobbs, Shaw's hits repeatedly stagger Hobbs who was able to take loads of attacks from Dom who is strong enough to lift cars and dent metal.
• Similarly Shaw was knocking around and staggering Dom with his hits in their fight, who could himself take hits from Hobbs with around the same level of difficulty (vid is linked before).

Shaw's most impressive showing however, is in his latest installment, when his efforts are combined with Hobbs' and they put down Brixton in 13 attacks, now you might argue Hobbs' hits were doing more damage based off of the time that Brixton was down and the visual effect it was having on Brixton, I'd say they were doing a similar level of damage, which in itself is an impressive showing as it puts him on the level of a guy who can dent thick metal.

Probably Shaw's biggest advantage in this fight is durability, and it's gonna be hell of a challenge for Ollie to put him down.

First off I'd like to start with his fight against Hobbs, Shaw takes 14 hits and gets slammed through a glass table but gets up and is completely fine after it all. Like I said before Hobbs was able to dent a thick metal door with a punch, something well beyond Oliver's level. And the fact that Shaw was able to walk off completely fine from this just shows how difficult it's gonna be for Ollie to put him down.

Similarly, in his fight against Dom, he takes 6 hits and is slammed on a car 3 times, same Dom was able to lift the front end of a car (albeit with difficulty it's still insane), and like Hobbs, dent metal with his punches.

In the screenshots below we can see the extent of the dent of Dom's punch.

And in what is Shaw's most impressive showing, he is able to take 9 hits from Brixton in the final fight and he got back up just fine. Brixton is genetically enhanced and can punch hard enough to dent a thick armored truck, something way beyond Oliver's level.

Outside of scaling, Shaw has also tanked a head on car collision, twice.

And to top it off, Shaw goes rolling down a hill in his vehicle and walks away the moment it stops like nothing happened.

Although the skill gap between these 2 isn't huge I'd argue that Shaw does still have an edge in skill, in their fight, Shaw lands 18 hits compared to Hobbs' 14, and while that isn't a big gap, Hobbs also had a physical advantage, Hobbs' hits such as his headbutts were leaving Shaw stunned which would give Hobbs more time to follow up whereas Shaw didn't have this same advantage.

Hobbs himself is quite impressive, here he clears a room of around 8 Russian Soldiers, it's worth noting that one Russian was giving Letty a good and prolonged fight, and Letty herself is no slouch, she was able to take out 3 Bodyguards single handedly. So Luke clearing these Russians with such difficulty while only getting tagged twice is a great feat.

And I'd just like to point out that if Hobbs was being fully serious like he was against Shaw, he wouldn't have even got tagged, because the whole reason he got tagged was because he allows a dude to kick his leg to intimidate the Soldier as he doesn't even move, then continues to stare the guy down which allows another Soldier to grab him for a moment while the other Soldier lands a punch. So if Hobbs was fully serious he wouldn't have even got tagged.

So in short, Shaw is more skilled than Hobbs who himself can take out a large group of Russian Soldiers that are capable of giving Letty a good fight, and Letty could take out 3 Bodyguards on her own.

And as I said Hobbs is also a beast physically, he's shown to:

• Lift huge concrete slabs.
• Pull a concrete desk off the wall and bicep curl it.
• Tanked this.
• Rubber bullets do pretty much nothing to him, same bullets that were knocking down highly armored guards.

Shaw was clearly more skilled than Dom as displayed in their fight, although Dom does land a few hits with the crowbar, Shaw was more focused on disarming Dom at that point, when both were unarmed - Shaw had the clear upper hand.

Dom himself has some good feats, he defeated Owen Shaw (Deckard Shaw's brother) in around 16 seconds.

Owen was able to defeat Brian O'Conner without much difficulty despite being ambushed, Brian is an FBI agent and has some good feats of his own such as defeating trained mercs or taking down 3 thugs armed with knives while in a tight area, while only getting tagged 2-3 times.

So, to summarize, he's clearly more skilled than Dom who himself was able to defeat Shaw who was able to defeat Brian, Brian is capable of taking out groups of fodder on his own.

Similarly to Hobbs, as I've mentioned, Dom is also physically insane:

• Lifts a car.
• Snaps handcuffs.
• Overpowered Hobbs.
• Tanked a huge explosion.
• A bullet just annoys him.

Like I said Oliver might have a strength advantage here, but it's not large, and Shaw has contended with physically superior opponents without much issue.

• Shaw can ragdoll grown men with one hand.
• Pushes a guard through a closed door.
• Knocks down a guard by throwing a shotgun at him.
• Matches Toretto in a clash, who can lift cars.

To start off, we've seen Shaw ragdoll guards in riot gear casually on two occasions.

Hobbs / Dom Scaling:

Now if we use scaling, we can deduce that Shaw hits similarly hard to Hobbs & Dom who both hit considerably harder than Oliver does.

• In his fight against Hobbs, Shaw's hits repeatedly stagger Hobbs who was able to take loads of attacks from Dom who is strong enough to lift cars and dent metal.
• Similarly Shaw was knocking around and staggering Dom with his hits in their fight, who could himself take hits from Hobbs with around the same level of difficulty (vid is linked before).

Shaw's most impressive showing however, is in his latest installment, when his efforts are combined with Hobbs' and they put down Brixton in 13 attacks, now you might argue Hobbs' hits were doing more damage based off of the time that Brixton was down and the visual effect it was having on Brixton, I'd say they were doing a similar level of damage, which in itself is an impressive showing as it puts him on the level of a guy who can dent thick metal.

Probably Shaw's biggest advantage in this fight is durability, and it's gonna be hell of a challenge for Ollie to put him down.

First off I'd like to start with his fight against Hobbs, Shaw takes 14 hits and gets slammed through a glass table but gets up and is completely fine after it all. Like I said before Hobbs was able to dent a thick metal door with a punch, something well beyond Oliver's level. And the fact that Shaw was able to walk off completely fine from this just shows how difficult it's gonna be for Ollie to put him down.

Similarly, in his fight against Dom, he takes 6 hits and is slammed on a car 3 times, same Dom was able to lift the front end of a car (albeit with difficulty it's still insane), and like Hobbs, dent metal with his punches.

In the screenshots below we can see the extent of the dent of Dom's punch.

And in what is Shaw's most impressive showing, he is able to take 9 hits from Brixton in the final fight and he got back up just fine. Brixton is genetically enhanced and can punch hard enough to dent a thick armored truck, something way beyond Oliver's level.

Outside of scaling, Shaw has also tanked a head on car collision, twice.

And to top it off, Shaw goes rolling down a hill in his vehicle and walks away the moment it stops like nothing happened.

Although the skill gap between these 2 isn't huge I'd argue that Shaw does still have an edge in skill, in their fight, Shaw lands 18 hits compared to Hobbs' 14, and while that isn't a big gap, Hobbs also had a physical advantage, Hobbs' hits such as his headbutts were leaving Shaw stunned which would give Hobbs more time to follow up whereas Shaw didn't have this same advantage.

Hobbs himself is quite impressive, here he clears a room of around 8 Russian Soldiers, it's worth noting that one Russian was giving Letty a good and prolonged fight, and Letty herself is no slouch, she was able to take out 3 Bodyguards single handedly. So Luke clearing these Russians with such difficulty while only getting tagged twice is a great feat.

And I'd just like to point out that if Hobbs was being fully serious like he was against Shaw, he wouldn't have even got tagged, because the whole reason he got tagged was because he allows a dude to kick his leg to intimidate the Soldier as he doesn't even move, then continues to stare the guy down which allows another Soldier to grab him for a moment while the other Soldier lands a punch. So if Hobbs was fully serious he wouldn't have even got tagged.

So in short, Shaw is more skilled than Hobbs who himself can take out a large group of Russian Soldiers that are capable of giving Letty a good fight, and Letty could take out 3 Bodyguards on her own.

And as I said Hobbs is also a beast physically, he's shown to:

• Held back a Helicopter and stopped it from flying upwards, it took 4 trucks to hold down the Helicopter but Hobbs did it for a moment single-handedly.
• Lift huge concrete slabs.
• Pull a concrete desk off the wall and bicep curl it.
• Tanked this.
• Rubber bullets do pretty much nothing to him, same bullets that were knocking down highly armored guards.

Shaw was clearly more skilled than Dom as displayed in their fight, although Dom does land a few hits with the crowbar, Shaw was more focused on disarming Dom at that point, when both were unarmed - Shaw had the clear upper hand.

Dom himself has some good feats, he defeated Owen Shaw (Deckard Shaw's brother) in around 16 seconds.

Owen was able to defeat Brian O'Conner without much difficulty despite being ambushed, Brian is an FBI agent and has some good feats of his own such as defeating trained mercs or taking down 3 thugs armed with knives while in a tight area, while only getting tagged 2-3 times.

So, to summarize, he's clearly more skilled than Dom who himself was able to defeat Shaw who was able to defeat Brian, Brian is capable of taking out groups of fodder on his own.

Similarly to Hobbs, as I've mentioned, Dom is also physically insane:

• Lifts a car.
• Snaps handcuffs.
• Overpowered Hobbs who could hold back a Helicopter.
• Tanked a huge explosion.
• A bullet just annoys him.

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We've seen Shaw's striking in Sub's opener. He can stagger nigh-superhuman behemoths in Hobbs and Dom.

Firstly, I want to note that most of Shaws' blows against Hobbs were completely useless. Not all, but most. For instance here Shaw lands three free blows and Hobbs basically ignores them, or here where something similar happens (Shaw hits Hobbs repeatedly and Hobbs basically ignores it and keeps going). In fact, even when he lands insane combos like at the start of here, he only achieves pushing Hobbs back a bit, something which Hobbs immediately comes back from, only to utterly no-sell two of Shaw's kicks and land a combo of his own.

The gif you posted of Shaw vs Dom shows something similar. It takes Shaw insane wind-up with a combo to stagger Dom, which leaves Dom open to being thrown around with more powerful punches, something I don't think will happen here.

Then the infamous Brixton fight. You're right - I went back and counted, it was 13 hits, 7 of which were Shaw's. However, I do have to mention that there's a decent amount of time of the fight that took place off-screen as well as the fact that for two of his hits, Shaw used a weapon. All that said, I think your scaling might be a bit questionable here. Putting the hurt similarly doesn't mean similar striking level - Shaw's fight with Hobbs proves this. His striking is definitely not consistently at the level that you're trying to play it off as.

Anyways, let's get into Oliver's durability feats. The most common metric used in debating durability for Oliver is one I'll be using as well: scaling to Arrowverse superhumans. For now, I'll just mention Cyrus Gold.

1. In Arrow 2x08, Oliver fights Cyrus Gold. He takes an absolute beatdown, including two punches and a kick to the chest. He remains conscious through all of that, only going down to being injected with something from the crates. Cyrus, of course, being infamous for casually denting with single strikes and throwing down a door made out of reinforced titanium (hard to find the video, but if you need it, I'll find a way to post it) in like 5 hits.
2. In an attempt to rescue Roy Harper, Oliver faces off against Cyrus Gold again. He gets thrown hard into a wall, leaving an Oliver-sized dent, gets kicked across the floor, skidding for over a couple feet and hitting a metal object then skidding a few more feet, and he just gets back up (with some hallucination prompting) to stomp him.

Cyrus' striking is way beyond anything Shaw can hope to replicate, and while he did put a beating on Oliver, it's not something Shaw has a chance in hell of coming close to. Cyrus, based on denting reinforced titanium, should be on par with or superior to Brixton's denting metal feat, and we already know that Shaw's striking has been next to useless against someone who could take punches from Brixton in Hobbs.

Shaw's durability is really the only reason this is debatable in any way. Like you said, he took 14 hits from Hobbs pretty handily and you scale it all to the metal-denting gif. However, said gif was an insane fit of rage because Hobbs thought Shaw had died. I highly, highly doubt that is Hobbs' consistent level of striking, or at least that he hit Shaw with that level of force every time.

With Dom it's more likely that it was metal-denting throughout, as it was a feat that happened mid-fight. The Dom feat is pretty solid. That said, the meat of this debate will rely on your scaling to Brixton, which I'll admit it pretty OP. I went back and counted again and yes, it's 9 hits. That doesn't mean Oliver won't be able to put the hurt on him, though.

With what basically seems to amount to a casual extension of his arm, Oliver sends a fully grown man flying through a portion of wooden wall, breaking everything in between. He has numerous feats of striking (and strength) that should allow him to do some decent damage to Shaw, feats such as:

1. Sending a man flying through a wooden table headfirst
2. One-shots Ghosts in body armor, again (if you look closely he didn't use his bow on the second guy) - body armor
3. Sends China White flying a great distance with a casual punch (extended the gif so you'd see how far the area was)
4. Dents concrete by smashing a guy's head into it

You also have his fights against Cyrus Gold above. It might sound like a double-standard to point out that Oliver staggered Cyrus, someone completely bulletproof who's skin was so tough steel arrows bent on them and was stated to be almost as dense as concrete (which is backed up by the fact that he carried a centrifuge so heavy he left footsteps in the concrete, implying insane superhuman durability), while also saying that Shaw staggering Hobbs/Dom are less applicable. However, I can safely argue this because Cyrus utterly no-sold the aforementioned things, meanwhile Dom and Hobbs were actually moved by the showings of durability you provided for them.

All of these, however, is just Oliver's arm/hand striking. His kicks are what are going to allow him to do real damage to Shaw. Let's take a look.

Here, Oliver takes out Rene Ramirez aka Wild Dog through his body armor with a kick. The same body armor that allowed him to tank a shotgun blast followed by a 10-ft fall with a little bit of damage. With this kick, though, he hospitalized Rene. This kick is just a taste of what Oliver can do, though. He's got some pretty insane ones:

1. Kicks Kovar through a chained door
2. Kicks down a padlocked door
3. Kicks a man's head through tile and wall
4. With a flying kick, sends a Ninth Circle member flying hard enough to dent metal

I do think that after a fight where Oliver lands far far more blows, that he'll put Shaw down. Even then, there are a handful other ways which I'll go over in the skill section.

You saw a couple strength feats above (sending men through layers of wood casually) and there's a few more.

1. Sticking an arrow in a guy, Oliver causes him to do a double flip
2. Sends Anarky flying from a disadvantaged position
3. Of course the obligatory neck snaps (1)(2)
4. Sends a man into another man through a wooden door, KOing them both
5. Sends a man flying, with the man's momentum taking down a metal gate

Like you said, similarly strong. I wouldn't argue strength by itself as an insane advantage for either combatant. You already conceded said advantage to Oliver, but this one isn't as important to this debate. Of course, there are ways of completely circumventing any strength edge which I'll go over later.

Before I start, I had to redo this section cause I accidentally deleted like a freaking moron, so apologies if it seems a bit rushed.

Like with the other sections, I'll begin by countering some of my opponent's key points about this aspect of the fight.

crickets chirping in the background

Dear old Subline... doesn't have a speed section. And for good reason: Shaw's combat speed is next to nonexistant in comparison to Oliver, who has tons of speed feats that blow most live action peak humans out of the water. This includes reflexes, and while those aren't as important, here are the obligatory arrow-timing feats (1)(2)(3) - note he wasn't prepared in any of them. In terms of combat and movement speed, I had 3-4 different sections which I'll do my best to remake now. The first one was Oliver moving while cameras were in slow motion:

In one of his lowest end feats in this regard, Oliver cleanly and clearly moves while the camera is in slow motion, taking out a projectile from the side of his suit and throwing it at the shooter. Again, this is one of his lowest end feats here. Let's take a look at some better ones, where either the camera is in slow motion or Oliver moves from the perspective of fast projectiles:

1. Oliver fires an arrow at Prometheus, with both of their arms moving as the arrow slo-mos towards Chase.
2. Basically Oliver's entire upper body in movement after an arrow has been fired (it appears to be in slow motion, but I can't tell for certain) before it reaches Samantha.
3. Oliver putting his arms down from what appears to be the perspective of the arrow.
4. Seeing an arrow flying at Wells, Oliver turns his entire upper body before the arrow can cross a few feet and hits it.

This isn't the only metric for Oliver's speed, though. He's both kept up with people who fight at, tagged people who fight at, outfought people who fight at, and even outright moved at FTE speeds. Cyrus Gold, for example, from earlier discussions. Every punch her threw made a distinct whoosh noise that seemed to imply punches thrown at superhuman speed. Even without that, he has scaling to the CW Super Soldier, who has explicit FTE combat speed:

Here, he's seen going baton-on-sword with Deathstroke with neither gaining ground until Oliver does a low spin, which Slade uses as an opening to pin him down using his superior speed (since he is, ultimately, faster) and strength. Even with all of that, Oliver cleanly kept up with the Mirakuru soldier for a commendable period. They trade 7 blows in the span of about 1.5 seconds - speeds that are just outright insane. This isn't a one-off thing, either:

1. Moves his upper body in tandem with Barry Allen's blurred body, then hits him in the face while he's still blurred
2. Appears as a blur to Deadshot while dodging his shots in a tie-in comic
3. Has scaling to the White Canary who has been described as a blur in a canon novel
   1. Outfights her here (time-stamped) and handily dominates at 1:43 - keep in mind she's mind controlled (so not holding back) whereas Oliver is holding back
4. I remember having another one, but I can't seem to find it...

Outside of seemingly FTE scaling, Oliver also has absolutely no problems keeping up with people who can defend attacks from all sides at once. These include people like Nyssa al Ghul (taking down 5 ninjas surrounding her casually, without getting touched or even more impressively taking out 6 surrounding her completely while holding back/not killing them) and Ra's al Ghul (who does the same as Nyssa except with 8 ninjas in about 12 seconds).

In all three of these instances, Nyssa and Ra's have to be fast enough to parry blows from highly skilled fodder (their training is stated to make special forces look like kindergarten) coming at them from multiple angles at insanely rapid speeds. Yet not only do they perform these actions perfectly, they take down the fodder rather quickly.

You'll see that Oliver scales cleanly to both of these in the skill sections.

Another bit I want to showcase for Oliver involves his draw speed. Yes, in an unarmed debate, I want to showcase Oliver's draw speed - in particular, feats where he has to move his arm, pick up whatever projectile he's using, nock it if necessary, aim it, and shoot before projectiles and fast people can do anything about it. A punch should move at similar, if not outright faster, speeds.

1. Draws/nocks/aims/shoots after a grenade had left its launcher but before it reached him
2. Draws/nocks/aims/shoots Vigilante's gun already at Curtis' head before he can pull the trigger
   1. Vig being an arrow timer
3. Draws/nocks/aims/shoots Black Canary (Dinah) before she can get her scream off
4. Draws a projectile from his suit and throws it at Lance before he can shoot him despite having the gun trained on him
   1. Lance has a few decent quickshot feats which I can try and find

Oliver's speed is basically the epitome of live action peak humans. Shaw just outright cannot compare, and you already conceded that Oliver has the skill advantage too (though it's much larger than you let on) meaning the hit ratio is going to be even more massive than what it seems.

Your first bit of scaling relies on Hobbs > soldiers > Letty > 3 bodyguards.

First of all, Letty was repeatedly tagged in the opening salvo of her fight when she was up against all 3 bodyguards. It was only when she managed to split them up (and this because one jumped over, landing in front of Letty and getting beat down first) that she managed to win.

Your next bit of Hobbs scaling relies on one soldier being > Letty. However, first of all, I'd call this insanely inconsistent from a skill perspective. Seriously voters, this is Sub's exact link. Go back five seconds and she literally one-shots another guy. The guy that gives Letty a fight is insanely huge, and he abuses an insane stats advantage against Letty. He was more comparable to the Rock in size. I mean seriously, look at the size difference between the guy Letty one-shot and the guy that was slamming her around. I'd argue this guy falls under the "Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder" trope. One of the examples they give being someone who has repeatedly graced the Battle Forums, Decoy John Lark from Mission Impossible: Fallout - a guy with no name putting up a surprising fight with no explanation. Sound familiar?

This might sound like lowballing, but it's really a simple concept to grasp. You're insanely overblowing the big Russian guy's feat in order to make Hobbs something he's not. He's still a great combatant, but nothing special compared to Oliver as we'll soon see.

Then you have Dom scaling. This is one is, I'd argue, a bit more concrete. Owen kicking Brian's ass is a solid feat, but I do want to point out that Brian got tagged 5 times, not 2-3 in his prison fight. Also, when he fought Owen, Brian had just taken a beating from the big burly dude who later on fought Hobbs on even ground, even overpowering him at points.

My greatest point of contention, however, is in your representation of Owen vs Dom. It seems clear - at least to me - that Owen is the more skilled between he and Dom, and that Dom had to abuse physicals to win. For example, at the beginning of your gif, Owen kicks Dom twice and even though Dom seems to block or catch these, he still gets sent reeling because they connected despite his best efforts. It's only until Owen gets in close that Dom takes his knees to the upper body and overpowers him, that's when he takes the edge, not because he outskilled him. He only finally learns the kicking lessons at the end, when he catches it and throws Owen.

Ben's first fight with Oliver in 2x02 establishes them as peers, with the fight ending in literally a stalemate. Their second fight begins as a 2v1 with China White assisting Turner, but Oliver takes her out then gets put in a lock. Their final S2 fight takes place in 2x12 with Turner ultimately putting Oliver down long enough to get away. These three fights - particularly the first and last ones - show that Turner and pre-LoA training Oliver should be EXTREMELY close where it pertains to CQC.

But just how good is pre-LoA training Oliver Queen with a bow? He just so happens to have scaling to an aforementioned person: Nyssa al Ghul. Here he fights her bow-on-sword, tagging her and remaining otherwise dead even with her until Merlyn interrupts. Here he does the same, except he tags her repeatedly (2 of those being in the background, but you can hear the sound effect of him hitting her).

Recall, Nyssa herself is an extremely skilled and fast opponent. With her sword, she can't take any advantage against Oliver whatsoever, yet Turner is not only a far closer fight, he's arguably had the edge a couple of times.

Now the real question is, what the hell does any of this have to do with unarmed Oliver? Well, in season 7, Oliver and Turner had a rematch. Oliver beats down Turner (getting tagged once) and a couple of inmates, then goes back to finish Turner.

S2 Oliver scaling isn't the only thing Turner has, though. If you find that a bit iffy (and I don't, as I'm ready to debate that it's perfectly fine and applicable) he's also stomped fodder prisoners (going untouched except from behind), Ninth Circle members, and dominated Daniel Brickwell in an exchange. Let's talk about that last one. Brick is someone who has fought evenly with John Diggle - they seem to trade dead even blows until Brick abuses his stats and pins Diggle. And before I hear "but Turner stabbed Brick before the fight," Brick has taken out an arrow and kept going. Diggle himself can stomp multiple LoA who have a reach advantage and multiple Ghosts simultaneously. Either way, scaling comes back from LoA to a handful of named characters who are all inferior to Oliver.

You saw earlier how Oliver kicked Rene, basically one-shotting him through his armor. They have a brief exchange beforehand, with Oliver using his bow, before he drops it and demolishes him (even then, he didn't really use the bow that much) even though Rene had picked up a hatchet for the ranged advantage.

Like I said, this is kind of a mid tier showing for Ollie, but Rene has some decent feats:

1. Casually stomps 2 of the Bratva's "best men"
2. Stomps multiple Earth-X Nazis
3. Takes down some of Talia's ninjas at a range disadvantage

All of these feats were done rather casually. Can Shaw does these? More than likely. As casually? Depends. The only one I think Shaw might struggle with is the third, seeing as he's never fought an opponent with a one-shot weapon and range advantage who actually knows how to use it (I think). Oliver casually put this man down without struggling. Shaw might be to as well, but I do not see him doing it as casually as Oliver did.

All this and Oliver was holding back, too, making it even more impressive.

Now Sampson's case is interesting. Unlike with the previous sections, where I establish Stardust before his most recent fight with Oliver, I'm going to instead showcase it immediately. First and foremost, this is the same episode where Oliver stomped Ben Turner with a stab wound, meaning the stab wound is still affecting Oliver (you'll even see it bleeding in the video).

Here is the 7x03 fight. You can see that Stardust sneak attacks Oliver with his back turned, slamming him down, followed by four punches (one to the face). Oliver catches the next punch and punches him away. Oliver looks at blood on his hands from the aforementioned wound. Oliver proceeds to slam Sampson, gets kicked away, blocks two hits, then utterly destroys him.

One specific thing I want to note is the way in which Oliver defeats him. This is an opponent Oliver can't normally put down with his punches, so what does he do? He overpowers his foe with technique: applying pressure on the arm with his leg, then breaking said arm. He does the same again shortly afterwards, breaking one of Sampson's joints. This is a feasible option Oliver has here, and a strategy we've seen him employ already.

Now the moreso reason Oliver stomping Stardust is so impressive is because Sampson put up a much better fight in S5, which really goes to show Oliver's seasonal improvement. While on a skillwise level he's still outmatched, he does manage to get a few licks in without sneak attacking and even flips Oliver over, which causes him to gain a momentary advantage. Oliver does the same thing again, breaking Stardust's joints. He uses gear to ultimately take him down, though.

This is an opponent with known superhuman stats, being capable of utterly bullying Oliver w/ a bow in CQC when the latter didn't know he was up against a superhuman. He was also skilled enough to stomp Rene before the stats (albeit Rene wasn't properly trained at this point, he was still capable of beating thugs in CQC).

Oliver has used various submission holds to take out his opponents throughout the years. You saw two such instances against Stardust - a decently (though not overly) skilled superhuman. I emphasized Stardust in particular because he was a superhuman, as well as the fact that Oliver went out of his way to break his joints. That's one option against Shaw. Plain 'ole "stay the arf down" submission holds are another. Let's take a look at two highly skilled combatants that he's used them on:

To briefly establish these guys, Diaz was capable of going untouched against and utterly dominating Speedy immediately after taking an arrow near the knee. While the argument that Thea was out of practice isn't completely wrong, she was still capable of - for a seriously prolonged period of time - contend with someone who received basically the same training as Nyssa (even besting Nyssa by knowing her moves, which should imply a similar skill level; also, the video edited out all the cuts so the actual fight is likely longer) in the very next episode.

Nyssa, on the other hand, also has a few unarmed showings. The most important one being clowning Roy while dominating Laurel, and forcing Roy on the defensive, making him have to incap her with a tranq gun. Laurel, while not at the decent level she's at later on in the season, was still a capable thug wrecker (1 on 1). Roy, on the other hand, is an established combatant capable of taking down Ninth Circle members, 3 prisoners (while handcuffed), and can 2v1 League of Assassin ninjas.

Now me personally, I don't see Shaw going untouched against Thea after taking an arrow near the knee and I seriously struggle to see him clowning Roy while fighting another decently skilled fighter, then putting Roy on the defensive (and by defensive I mean forced only to block or parry without launching his own attacks), at least as easily as Nyssa did.

Yet, unarmed, Oliver got both of these opponents in holds that they were completely unable to get out of. Diaz had to cheat by pulling a knife and Nyssa couldn't get out until Oliver let her go when he saw Sara. Nyssa was also pre-Ra's training. Also, it's implied that Oliver held back in that particular fight against Diaz so he could show Anatoly that Diaz wasn't an honorable man, but even without that Diaz is still a fighter capable of threatening Oliver as seen in their finale fight.

Adrian Chase, my personal favorite Arrow villain is the first unarmed showing I'm going to speak of. Oliver fought him at various times unarmed. In fact, his first fight against Chase, Oliver is unarmed. It starts at 1:19 and ends at 1:44 (it's continued but Prometheus uses that move that throws Ollie off). So literally a 25 second fight. From 1:26 (catching Prometheus' punch) to about 1:39 (punching him), that's 13 seconds that Oliver dominated the fight. Now Chase did have his moments - the first 3ish seconds, the last 3ish seconds - but compared to the amount that Oliver dominated the fight, it's not close. Note that Prometheus has a weapon throughout all of that, either his bow or his sword, meaning a decent ranged advantage, yet Oliver still dominated. The remainder of the time was a kind of even trading.

They have another fight in which Oliver is unarmed in 5x21 and Prometheus has a knife. Chase gains an early upper hand in extremely tight quarters, disarming Ollie. He tags Oliver repeatedly and doesn't get tagged. Interesting to note, however, is that Oliver seems to perform better unarmed (Chase with a knife, Oliver with nothing, no one tags anyone) than armed (Chase with a knife, Oliver with a bow, Chase tags him repeatedly). He only gets dominated because he turns around to pick up the bow and Chase pins him to the wall again before he can recover. As I said, I'm not going to outright argue Oliver unarmed > Oliver armed, but given this scaling his two skillsets should be extremely close.

There's this one bit from their second fight that I want to show. While Oliver is armed, he lands a decent amount of blows without his bow on Chase:

He cleanly hits Prometheus square in the chest before the fight fully starts. They then trade blows and Oliver does something else entirely without his bow: a form of low kick with a spin that sends Prometheus downwards momentarily. He cleanly outperforms Chase here, and in the next part of the fight as well (landing a flip kick, tagging him with the Diazepam). Note that all of Oliver's hits in this fight (before being distracted by Felicity being in danger) could have been accomplished without his bow.

He completely destroyed him finale fight, but that was also basically bloodlusted Oliver due to William so I won't mention that fight. Let's see here, for a mid-way recap;

• Fight 1: Oliver without his bow dominates Prometheus with either a bow or a sword.
• Fight 2: Oliver lands multiple non-bow hits on Chase (a punch to the chest with non-bow arm, low kick to the leg, flip kick to the face) despite the latter having both bow and sword. Once Oliver gets the knowledge that Felicity is in danger, Prometheus finally lands a kick onto Oliver.
• Fight 3: I didn't showcase it even though it's unarmed vs unarmed as Chase doesn't have any other purely unarmed feats to the best of my knowledge, but Oliver did dominate that insanely hard.
• Fight 4: Chase with a knife cleanly outdoes Oliver with a bow, they fight a bit more evenly once Oliver is unarmed, Chase takes the advantage because Oliver reached for his bow.
• Fight 5: Oliver decimates cause William.

I mean, from this I conclude that Oliver with a bow and Oliver without a bow are extremely comparable. Fights against Prometheus are an exceptional way to prove this. Having a bow doesn't hinder him nor further him, since he can do the same thing with or without a bow against Chase.

This means that feats such as disarming Vandal Savage (a bona fide bullet timing superhuman who teambusted Spartan, Speedy, and Laurel Black Canary), fighting equally with Arrow-X (who teambusted Curtis/Rene/Dinah with ease), and outfighting White Canary/Diggle/Speedy while holding back become not exactly applicable to this debate but certainly mentionable, and I think we can both agree that Shaw doesn't have a snowballs' chance in hell of replicating this.

Again, I'm not saying he'd replicate all of this without his bow, since he uses it often for parrying other weapons and the like, but he should be more than capable of coming close to doing so based on performance with Prometheus.

Anyways just to mention some other Prometheus feats he's stomped Artemis 1v1 getting tagged once (she was a capable thug wrecker at the time), stomped Curtis 1v1 getting tagged once (he was a decentish thug wrecker at the time), and beat Vigilante 1v1 (who could pull a gun on Diggle and shoot him in close quarters).

Also of note, Ollie has also used a submission-esque technique against Adrian:

So yeah, just more of those.

While in prison in exchange for the FBI's help to take down Ricardo Diaz, Oliver Queen faced a trio of opponents, all of whom I've already established. These include a S2 Oliver+ level opponent, a Diggle+ level opponent, and a decently-skilled superhuman... at the same time.

The fight begins with Stardust and Turner attempting attacks on Oliver, who dodges, but gets caught by the third attack from Brick. He tells them they don't want a fight, they tell him they do, and the fight begins. From there he:

1. Dodges an attack Turner
2. Jumps over the table
3. Gets hit by Stardust, then by Brick
4. Redirects an attack from Turner into Sampson
5. Blocks three hits in quick succession
6. Dodges a kick from Turner
7. Makes Sampson hit Brick
8. Takes the knife out of Sampson's leg
9. Dodges a hit from Turner, making him hit Sampson
10. Gets pinned by Turner so he can plant the knife on him

All things considered - three insane opponents, all of whom I'd argue would highly pressure (and tbh in the case of Turner outright beat) Shaw - getting tagged only twice (not counting the sneak attack) while blocking, dodging, and most importantly redirecting multiple hits from multiple skilled opponents is insane. Shaw would get murdered in this scene by feats.

Ra's is another interesting case. Recall I showed him utterly slaughtering 8 LoA ninjas in 12 seconds, parrying hits at rapid paces from multiple directions coming from highly skilled fodder, which is an insane showing of skill and combat speed that Shaw outright can't replicate.

Let's look at Oliver's two post-training fights with Ra's.

1. Oliver gets his ass kicked on the plane
2. Oliver gets his ass kicked on the bridge

So what the actual hell was the point of me posting Oliver getting his ass kicked? Well in the first fight Oliver is unarmed the entire time and in the second, Oliver gets unarmed at one point. Let's look at these. In the very, very first seconds of the airplane fight, Oliver does something that 8 League ninjas (and Oliver himself armed with a sword) at the same time couldn't do: disarm Ra's in a single maneuver. While he does lose the unarmed vs unarmed duel, he doesn't too shabby either, especially considering the utter whooping he put on pre-League training Oliver (who, albeit untrained with a sword, was still a formidable combatant).

The second shows something similar. Oliver with a sword gets dominated handily, but once unarmed, he beats Ra's using the same move he once used on him, effectively completely outspeeding the Demon's Head completely, taking his sword and stabbing him before he can react. Yet Ra's was effectively dominating an armed Oliver on the bridge, landing multiple blows on the latter and keeping him down.

Is unarmed Oliver outright > Oliver with a sword? Probably not. But just like examples with Chase, they should be extremely close, especially considering that Oliver did more without a sword than he did with a sword. So what exactly is Oliver capable of with a sword? He can stomp Malcolm Merlyn. Now I'll be the first to admit to the knowledge that the fight was originally intended to be longer, but a) we don't know how much longer, b) Oliver has already beaten Malcolm before his League training, so even with additional time, it's unlikely Malcom would've had more of a chance and c) Oliver was going to win anyways.

Malcolm, of course, can 4v1 League with his bow (which he dual wielded against Oliver at one point in the fight) and 3v1 League with a sword, as well as being capable of defeating Nyssa in a spar while she wasn't holding back (dominating so hard as to disarming her and putting a weapon in kill position in two locations at the same time), beats her handily in 4x13 (can't find a video) sword vs sword, can dominate her while unarmed, etc. Even in the Oliver vs Malcolm fight, Oliver reminds Nyssa that she told him that she couldn't beat Merlyn.

So what does Oliver do for her? Beat Merlyn, sword vs sword (and bow at one point for Merlyn). Yet Oliver outperformed himself with a sword (being Malcom+ level which is >> Nyssa level, Nyssa with a sword being someone I'd argue would wreck Shaw), unarmed against Ra's. Again, I'm only arguing this the way I've said it before: not fully applicable, but far, far, far from dismissable. Even taking the Merlyn scaling out of it (and I still believe it's somewhat applicable), Oliver still did unarmed what 8 League ninjas couldn't do. But if we include Merlyn scaling (and there's no reason we shouldn't), unarmed Oliver did to Ra's what an Oliver armed with a sword outright couldn't.