MCU: Black Widow vs Grant Ward

I just think Ward beats her via better physical stats and comparable skill.

Natasha is certainly a master combatant, I just think Ward overall is more fundamentally and tactically sound.

Widow's been portrayed as just as much of a master fighter, imo, but I can kind of see where you're coming from. I never got the impression that they were supposed to have different specialties but that they were both specialists of the same caliber, but I can see how May's spends more time on h2h and less on espionage compared to Widow.

Again, it would depend on who was writing the fight (we've discussed that aspect before).

How do you think Widow and May's physical compare?

@the_magister:

If Ward had done it as easily as Widow then yes, training would matter. But when Widow easily beats down twice as many guys as Ward with much less effort then no, it doesn't matter. Because they're both well trained groups and there isn't even a quantifiable way to judge how skilled those agents were.

Rumlow's STRIKE team showed in the fight with Cap that they're going to have way more coordination than anything the guys Ward faught, and most fodder, have shown.

Except most of the guys would be further behind on the panel. If they wanted to show her fighting 5 guys or something they wouldn't show a dozen of them going after her.

Okay. Disarming someone more than 5 times stronger than you and extremely skilled is less impressive than landing hits on someone decently skilled and 4 times or so stronger than you? Natasha also landed more hits (1 of them in the start of the fight before Okoye came in). Ward wouldn't do anything against Proxima, she is far above the Centipedes in terms of durability.

A centipede soldier is a bit better than an Outrider, but he's also far, far behind Proxima.

Yes, Okoye with her spear would beat a Centipede.

The bulldoze feat is litteraly what Cap was stated to have replicated far more easily. That's not debatable. And the helicopter feat is most certainly comparable.

It wasn't a lot closer to h2h, because Clint used his bow against an unarmed Widow. He was fighting her and Panther under the same circumstances.

That's lowballing the showing quite a bit. Corvus is absurdly tough. He threw Vision a 100 ft. or something in the air with one arm. He straight up overpowered Cap, he didn't content with him, and he's more than twice Widow's size. Even if you want to say the stab downgraded him that much, it's still Natasha sending a guy with Super Soldiers physicals (the least) flying.

Honestly, Ward flipping guys like that is not that relevant in terms of striking. It's more lifting strength, which I agree he's superior at. Natasha was manhandling and one shotting guys with armors and vests with barely any effort. Striking is way more than just arm strenght (which Ward is barely above Natasha at), it's monmentum and technique too.

Show me Ward doing anything like grabbing on a high speed jet with 1 arm, sending a super soldier level opponent (Chiaturi) flying with a kick and cutting down a Chiaturi metal chain (stated to be stronger than earthly metal), all after hours of fighting aliens, Hawkeye and getting chased down and tossed aside by the Hulk. Ward's never done anything as good as that in terms of strength.

May has no striking feats on Widow's level either.

The one time Ward faught an agent on Natasha's level in straight up, no outside factors, h2h, (Bobbi) he was clearly inferior.

They are both...incredible physical specimens. I'll come back to this.

Widow has some feats which get overlooked in this area, I need to do some research.

@anthp2000: I might get to this later bro.

BTW I can't express this enough, how much I respect you for debating this so well. I feel like some people hide behind "Widow is an Avenger and in the films" without providing any more logic than that, but you don't do that at all. It is always a pleasure to see your take on things. Very well articulated.

@arcus1: Did you watch IW?

@the_magister: Thanx bro.

I respect your knowledge and everything on this conversations too. You're one of the expertises in the MCU/live action shows in general.

@anthp2000: You make me blush. You are one of the premier live action experts too.

I'll try to get back to this once full Infinity War clips come out on YouTube. I am terrible at going off of my own memory.

@the_magister: Some stuff are getting leaked on YouTube, but yeah, I get it.

Yep, finally got to it

@arcus1:

What did you think?

Probably my favourite MCU film besides TWS and CW.

@anthp2000:Fantastic, lots of fighting which is always good, but even the overall plot was good. Enough quips and such to have funny moments, but it definitely kept a serious tone overall, which was good.

@arcus1:

Esspecially given the challenge they had with living to the hype and getting all these characters from different parts of the universe together (and making each one justice), the Russos did an amazing job, as always.

@the_magister@anthp2000

Got some gifs of the Widow and Proxima fight

@angeljax: Cool.

First one she's disarming Proxima and even holds her defence against Proxima's superior angle.

Proxima directly overpowers them in the second one. But we can at least see that Okoye wasn't involved after she was dropped (we see her in the very same spot after Wanda gains consciousness), which means Widow was fighting her 1 on 1 for almost a minute.

In the bottom gif, you can see that she lands a kick that staggers Proxima before Okoye jumps in. She also stops Proxima's monmentum after she leaps into the fight.

Also, I'm not sure, but it looks like Widow's batons have a stunning effect? Could be Proxima's weapons tho.

Also, been trying to justify Cap being able to match Proxima's strength like that, which was kind of weird at first. I found an analysis of the scene on YouTube and I think it makes sense that Proxima wasn't going all out to not destroy Corvus' weapon (that Can was using against her), while he was clearly struggling more than her in that exchange (judging by their faces).

Honestly, I'm becoming more and more impressed by this showing. Among AoS feats, it's comfortably Bobbi vs Vin Tak (second fight) sequence imo.

@arcus1: What do you think of Natasha's performance against the Black Order?

@anthp2000: Widow's new batons have a shock function yes.

It was good, a tad overrated at points though I think. It didn't really boost her for me, more helped support where I thought her placement in-universe should be (which tended to be a bit higher than a very strict feats-only view might support-in my head I had her at the same level as someone like May or Bobbi, her biggest disadvantage was always quantity of feats)

@arcus1: Agreed.

Don't get me wrong, in-universe, Widow should be every bit as good as any agent from the very beginning, but in terms of h2h feats, she didn't stand out too much before Civil War, quantifiably (she was clearly a high level threat with good fodder-wrecking scenes, stats and choreography etc.) but, nowhere near the collection of showings someone like May has.

Post-CW (with the airport fight that gave her and Hawkeye scalable opposition), I had her around that level by all means. Haven't really changed my opinion on where I'd place her overall, it's just more comfortable supporting that position now.

Always felt like she just needed some life or death h2h situation to establish her abilities more (and what's better than the children of Thanos prepping an apocalypse). The movie really did focus on her and her skill concerning street levellers.

@angeljax: @anthp2000:

ANTHP - Agree to disagree on the fodder feats, I don't think we'll change our opinions on that. But either way, these two are so good that I don't think fodder fights will be the differentiator.

I still feel like Cap being able to perform the bulldozer feat is contradictory to what we see him do on-screen. I don't think the AoS writers really thought that line through. The helicopter feat is a 5-10 ton feat if we calc it very liberally, nowhere near pushing a 50 ton bulldozer like 100 meters. Would you agree angeljax?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Widow basically disarmed Proxima by batting her sword aside. That doesn't really make sense, unless you consider that Widow's batons might've forced Proxima to drop it by sending a current through the conductive sword metal. Rewatching that gif, that really makes the most sense logically and logistically. It's even consistent with Widow's batons being charged up the whole time, throughout the fight. The best part of what she's doing is standing her ground defensively, but I don't think the disarm is a function of pure skill due to the factors mentioned above. Widow is very clearly using the shock function to its fullest potential, and that's what I think brought about the disarm.

I think Widow's feat is certainly incredible, enough to put her over most combatants. I have her pegged above Danny atm, despite his quantity of feats. I have her way above Frank, I have her decisively above Nobu, etc. It's just that Ward's Centipede Soldier feat, he wasn't just trying to take the guy out. He was trying to neutralize him by attaching a device to his wrist, and he had to repeatedly let himself inside the soldier's guard for that. I feel like getting tagged is a product of that more than anything, whereas Nat had no such constraint limiting her ability to just play the fight defensively and carefully. If we also take Widow's shock batons into consideration, the disarm wasn't exactly a product of pure skill unlike Ward getting the soldier into a disadvantaged position.

Regarding strength/striking feats for Ward, he has more ragdolling feats than Nat - straight up doing this to an armored SHIELD agent, achieving a Batfleck-esque strength feat which involves sending a guy rotating into the air with a simple right hook, casually one-shotting large and muscular security guards, kicking Deathlok to his knees and getting him into a chokehold. Nat is generally portrayed to rely on using her bodyweight to do amazing maneuvers on grown & trained men, and she doesn't just brute force through stuff like Ward does.

What makes you so certain that Ward wins?

Ward destroys, but still haven't seen IW.

@the_magister:

Regardless of what you think on Cap, Proxima's stronger than Cap.

Whenever Widow's weapons produced a current, it was shown, and heard. That's not the case with when she disarmed Proxima. It was all skill, and it's 100% evident and clear. Proxima was not even close to bothered any time the shock function was used.

I don't know how you could still consider Ward's fight with the Centipede comparable to Widow's performance against Proxima. She landed and blocked hits and disarmed an opponent that's on an entirely different tier than a centipede soldier.

Natasha doesn't ragdoll people because she doesn't have Ward's lifting strength, or size. I've been arguing throughout the whole discussion about striking, not lifting. Frankly, Ward just doesn't hit as hard on a regular basis, even if he'd likely win in Arn wrestling.

Nobody is stomping here, even pre-IW.

@the_magister:

Ward has a huge strength and durability advantage, and their skill and speed are similar.

@the_magister:

I don't get how the feats I posted are lifting at all. I posted only striking feats. These are all striking, and Ward consistently operates on a higher level here than Nat does.

I screenshotted the exact moment when Proxima was disarmed:

As you can see, there is very clearly an electric shock. The video link is here. The video moves super slowly frame by frame, so you can see the electric shock force the blade out of Proxima's hand.

Here it is in gif form:

True. But she is fast enough to keep up, and I'd argue is a bit more fluid and technical when she fights to balance it out. I think Ward wins for sure, but I think Widow is a bit underrated and it wouldn't be a stomp.

@the_magister:

It takes lifting strength to ragdoll people via grappling, like in the gifs you posted. It takes striking to slice down steel chains while not at 100% to kick superhuman beings away and to one shot armored soldiers.

Only showings Ward has here is ragdolling fodder, and that doesn't hustify him hitting harder than Natasha.

I'm well aware, but the video also doesn't include several moments - exactly because it goes that slow. From what I can tell, Natasha hit her in the elbow bit that didn't affect her and she slipped at the blade itself.

Until the blue ray is out, I think it's safer to go by the actual normal speed video, cause Proxima was not bothered even once by Widow's shock batons. That's why I wasn't even sure if the batons had a shock function to begin with.

Also, regardless, Natasha's showing is still above Ward vs the Centipede. Comparing Proxima to a centipede is lowballing at best.

@anthp2000 I'm not sure I understand why the video going at normal speed would let you break down the fight better than a video that goes frame by frame. It could go by too quickly in normal speed, making a slowed down gif is the best way we have of evaluating the feat. We very clearly see Widow's baton delivering an electric shock and Proxima subsequently jerking her arm and dropping the blade. I don't see how that's debatable, this really can't get any clearer:

Widow is on the defensive, tags Proxima once with her taser baton, an electric current is visibly discharged, and Proxima's entire arm jerks to make her drop the weapon. It's pretty clear-cut and straightforward what happened.

Ward, on the other hand...let's say that Centipede Soldiers are inferior to Proxima. He still had to get inside his guy's guard to try and attach a neutralizing agent to the supersoldier's wrist, forcing him to repeatedly go inside the soldier's guard. He didn't have the luxury of playing defensive like Natasha did, nor did he have any outside help at all. Natasha may have fought Proxima by herself for a time, but fact of the matter is that Ward was 100% alone in his fight, and on top of that - he'd been ordered not to kill the soldier. Did Natasha have any of this in play against her?

Regarding strength: none of what I posted is grappling though. All of it is striking.

How is this a grapple in any way, shape, or form? It's a right hook, which qualifies as a strike. I mean, he basically replicates Batfleck's infamous warehouse punch. Nat doesn't do this, at all:

Similarly, this is pure striking ability. He sends an armored guy flipping through the air. There is zero grappling involved, he is just hitting the guy head-on:

This is also pure striking. He casually one-shots a large and muscular security guard without trying. When we see Nat doing anything remotely similar, she usually puts her whole body weight into it. If you can show me Natasha casually one-shotting a large and muscular security guard and continuing to walk as if nothing happened, you can say she has better striking power than Ward:

I mean, the moment she was put against guys who were of this sort of muscular build and also trained, she failed to oneshot or twoshot them. Instead, it was a real struggle for her to keep them down:

Ward also gets Deathlok, a supersoldier himself, into a compromised position with a kick to the knees:

@the_magister said:

@anthp2000 I'm not sure I understand why the video going at normal speed would let you break down the fight better than a video that goes frame by frame. It could go by too quickly in normal speed, making a slowed down gif is the best way we have of evaluating the feat. We very clearly see Widow's baton delivering an electric shock and Proxima subsequently jerking her arm and dropping the blade. I don't see how that's debatable, this really can't get any clearer:

Widow is on the defensive, tags Proxima once with her taser baton, an electric current is visibly discharged, and Proxima's entire arm jerks to make her drop the weapon. It's pretty clear-cut and straightforward what happened.

Ward, on the other hand...let's say that Centipede Soldiers are inferior to Proxima. He still had to get inside his guy's guard to try and attach a neutralizing agent to the supersoldier's wrist, forcing him to repeatedly go inside the soldier's guard. He didn't have the luxury of playing defensive like Natasha did, nor did he have any outside help at all. Natasha may have fought Proxima by herself for a time, but fact of the matter is that Ward was 100% alone in his fight, and on top of that - he'd been ordered not to kill the soldier. Did Natasha have any of this in play against her?

Regarding strength: none of what I posted is grappling though. All of it is striking.

How is this a grapple in any way, shape, or form? It's a right hook, which qualifies as a strike. I mean, he basically replicates Batfleck's infamous warehouse punch. Nat doesn't do this, at all:

Similarly, this is pure striking ability. He sends an armored guy flipping through the air. There is zero grappling involved, he is just hitting the guy head-on:

This is also pure striking. He casually one-shots a large and muscular security guard without trying. When we see Nat doing anything remotely similar, she usually puts her whole body weight into it. If you can show me Natasha casually one-shotting a large and muscular security guard and continuing to walk as if nothing happened, you can say she has better striking power than Ward:

I mean, the moment she was put against guys who were of this sort of muscular build and also trained, she failed to oneshot or twoshot them. Instead, it was a real struggle for her to keep them down:

Loading Video...

Ward also gets Deathlok, a supersoldier himself, into a compromised position with a kick to the knees:

Must say, after reading this, I'd give it to Ward.

Thanks. I think it's a good fight either way. Ward's similarly skilled and significantly more physical, and I think his physical stats give him the win.

Agree wholeheartedly. Originally I put it at a draw for R1 & Ward for R2 with an 8/10. How would you rank each round out of 10?

@the_magister: Why would you say she’s more fluid and technical?

I'd give it to ward both rounds, I'm surprised at how many people undersold ward and voted Natasha (especially in R2)

Choreography. And when I say that, I don't mean any of their individual moves are better executed than the other's. I think the stylistic choices attributed to both of these fighters are wildly different, and Ward essentially uses his physicals and quick tactical thinking in a very skillful manner. Natasha comes across as more of an agile traditionalist, relying more on raw application of technique because she doesn't have that luxury to abuse her physicals. Both of them are superhuman by any real world standards, but Ward's strength/durability are pretty insane even by MCU peak human standards.

In actual martial arts skill, they're similar. Natasha just employs a more free flowing approach to combat.

And it makes sense, too - based on how he's been sold to the audience and how he's been depicted to fight, Ward is essentially HYDRA's answer to elite SHIELD agents like May, Natasha, etc. This shows in his fighting style too.

@the_magister: I agree that Natasha has to rely on her skill to compensate for lack of physicals, but it’s not like Ward also doesn’t do so. He demonstrated great skill fighting the Centipede soldier, for instance, holding his own and even winning despite being vastly outclassed in physicals. I also think that weapons are a big part of Natasha’s success. And if you think that their martial art skills are similar, what do you mean by a free flowing approach?

Ward takes this because of his physicals but we wait till avengers 4 And her solo movie then it will change probably

A fight between the two greatest combatants in fiction cannot be conclusive. It will last longer than any of us will live.

@bladeoffury: Ward is indeed very skilled. What I meant by a free flowing approach essentially comes down to their respective fodder feats. Ward is a chainsaw, using an unorthodox combo of skill and physicals to destroy his opponents - Natasha is a precise blade, cutting through her opponents like butter.

@the_magister: Well, I wouldn’t say she cuts through her opponents like butter. Unless, she has gear, she always has trouble taking down full grown men because of lack of strength. Ward is a tank, and if he’s just as skilled as Widow, I don’t see how he loses.

@the_magister:

Because in the normal speed video, I think we can see Widow reaching to Proxima's weapon to disarm her after stunning her. And exactly because the video is so slow frame by frame, several individual (in-between) frames are missing, misleading us to believe that nothing elese happened in between Widow stunning Proxima and he latter getting disarmed. That's visible throughout the entire video.

However, I'll concede for now after looking at the fight at normal speed (though crappy quality), but I still take it with a grain of salt, we should wait for a clip of the fight to be released at good quality and normal speed first. The reason I doubt it this much is because Proxima was never bothered before while

I still disagree, like heavily, that Ward's showing against the Centipede is anywhere near as impressive as Natasha's fight with Proxima. She did similarly good (she landed hits and staggered her outside of the disarm) and Proxima's at least a couple of tiers above any Centipede. This is simply not debatable, unless you think the Centipede can fight Scarlet Witch, stomp a room of Wakandan Elites and Shuri, excahnge blows with the team of Cap and Widow or stomp an armed Okoye. Her individual showings of stats are superior and she's a tier above your average Centipede is still.

She has one and two shotted several muscular (and more muscular than these) men before that. Just look at the interrogation scene. Hell, Rumlow's strike team took more than one hit from Cap and she was one and two shotting them. Ward wouldn't do any better there. And large part of it had to do with the fact that she had to be careful to not let them drop the biological weapon while fighting them. If anything, this is just a testament to the control she had over them.

Bottom of the line, Ward doesn't have individual striking feats like sending Corvus Glaive flying, performing like she did riding the Chiaturi jet while fatigued or significally (though momentarily) hurting Bucky. Just ragdolling large fodder doesn't justify him being able to pull those things off. And I don't agree either of the gifs you posted show something more impressive than casulaly beating down soldiers wearing helmets and vests. Like, let's not act that Ward one shots all his fodder either.

I still think it's a good fight, but all Ward has on Nat is his insane damage soak. I already gave you my thoughts on all his fights with May, and why I don't see him as her equal, and scaling from May is the only reason why Ward is on the same level as the agents. Widow's significally more technically efficient and, wether or not she looks like it, she hits harder.

Widow's individual showings are on Bobbi's level (although I think Bobbi's slightly better), and she is clearly his superior in h2h, even if he's comparable.

@anthp2000: As always, good post. I actually rewatched Infinity War for the THIRD FREAKING TIME a couple days ago. I'll get to this post...eventually. Lol

@the_magister:

My God lol

@anthp2000: Even Infinity War gets boring when you get dragged to see it THREE TIMES, my friend

@the_magister: I was lowkey bored by some scenes on my first viewing ?.

I saw it in theaters a second time anyway a few days ago lol.

@angeljax:

Which scenes?

#firstworldprobs

@arcus1: lmao