Marc shows up at K’un-Lun to take Danny’s power. There is no sign that Marc has been amped by unusual powers like intangibility in this fight. What’s not clear is how much, if at all, Marc is amped in terms of strength, speed, and durability beyond his normal level of enhancement.

Marc starts off praying. He is clearly in communion with Khonshu. My overall sense is, he is getting an amp in physical stats from Khoshu—but as I’ve noted, I believe that is the standard for how Moon Knight works: Khonshu gives him the power he needs to accomplish his goals, within reason, and sometimes in a fickle way. This is usually not explicit, but it’s the best explanation for how Marc, for example, falls out of an airplane and survives. There are many other examples like this.

Back to the fight: Marc punches Danny twice, and Danny blocks them. Danny hits Marc in the chest solidly, and Marc is pushed back but largely shrugs it off. Danny eagle claws his throat, and Marc punches Danny in the face, turning his head and clearly causing some hurt. Danny hits Marc four times in a row, knocking him down. The moon becomes brighter. Marc punches Danny in the face again twice, and again Danny is clearly hurt by this and knocked down.

For the first time, Danny breaks out the Iron Fist, and hits Marc in the face, knocking him back. That’s the last time he hits Marc. Marc then kicks Danny, and then punches him, again turning his head back, and Danny misses Marc for the first time. Then Marc pummels Danny in a flurry of punches (16, if we go by the number of afterimages).

Danny is still standing, and his Iron Fists are lit up, but he is bent over and can barely speak. Then Marc uses Khonshu’s ankh to steal his power.

Lessons: I believe this is a pretty straight version of Moon Knight, meaning that he is clearly enhanced by Khonshu (for instance, he’s praying to him at the beginning, and Danny points out the increased glow of the moon), but not in a way that is radically different from other levels of enhancement that he has received from Khonshu in the past. What we see here from Marc is his standard skill level. If we just go by hits that contacted, before that flurry of 16, then Danny landed 7 on Marc and Marc landed 5 on Danny. That’s a reasonably appropriate number for their respective skill levels.

Marc shows a level of strength that is pretty normal for him when his strength is enhanced—Danny did take 18 straight hits from him at the end and was still standing, after all, so his striking power was not that different from usual, especially when Marc’s classic “moon” strength is enough to do this or this. And Marc’s durability was not radically higher than usual—Danny only hit him with the Fist once, plus 6 normal strikes. I think a normally-powered Marc could take that, considering he's been blasted by Kang, repeatedly clawed by Werewolf by Night, ignored a hatchet blow directly to chest, burned, taken massive claw hits through the torso, been hit by a van thrown by Mr. Hyde, etc. Marc’s speed may be a bit higher than usual, given the flurry of blows at the end, and in general his capacity to hang with Danny’s own ability to enhance his speed with chi. But given Marc’s proven bullet-timing in the past (for example one, two, three, four), even that flurry may just be a combination of Marc’s normal speed plus Danny’s level of woundedness making him incapable of responding.

The one point of context I will make in Danny’s defense is that he didn’t break out the Fist until late in the fight, partly because he didn’t know Marc really wanted to beat him up. But, that’s also in part a matter of character. Danny is often a little more carefree kind of a fighter and doesn’t get serious until he realizes he has too, at which point sometimes it’s too late; Marc goes into a fight intending to pound the other guy into submission no matter what.

Bottom line: Whatever level of enhancement Marc got from Khonshu, plus his own skills, was enough to defeat the level of enhancement Danny was capable of getting from Shou-lau, plus his own skills. This was a pretty straight fight between two skilled characters and their attempts to use their mystical enhancements to their advantage, and Marc’s skills and enhancements beat Danny’s skills and enhancements.

The next couple fights have less to tell us about Marc’s normal abilities. Khonshu brings a legion of his sorcerer-priests and mummies to attack Doctor Strange before Marc hits him and takes his power. Marc just steals Ghost Rider’s car from outside his house, presumably using a mix of Khonshu, Strange, and Shou-lao’s power to do so. Then he beats Thor by setting the fight on the moon, where he has the advantage, and by surprising Thor (and the readers) by explaining that uru is made of moon rock, and thus under his control. Presumably his other amps help here too. He beats up Thor with his own hammer and then squishes him between a bunch of crushed-together moons. The use of multiple, or larger, moons throughout does echo to an old West Coast Avengers fight where, in a dimension of numerous moons, he was able to trash a robot supposedly immune to powers at Wonder Man's level. He also briefly fights Carol Danvers and Iron Man and destroys an incarnation of Mephisto. But again, all these fights are only possible due to his various extra amps and Khonshu's priests so they don't matter much to the battle forum.

Inexplicably, from my perspective, he is unable to steal Black Panther’s power when he can steal all these others. I get that the power is a part of T’Challa, and that he has a really strong will, but those don’t seem like radical differences from others whose powers were more easily stolen. In any case, Khonshu goes nuts, and in Avengers 36, Moon Knight no longer has any of the ankhs that give him the enhancements when he fights Black Panther. He has, however, talked with the Unseen and learned about how to summon the Phoenix.

Point being, this is normal Moon Knight, enhanced to, at best, the degree he was when he fought Iron Fist, and potentially less than that since Khonshu is now busy with other things and needs to marshal his power. I present the scans of this fight in chronological order instead of how they appear in the comic, which intentionally told the story out of order.

There are three points of context to look at throughout this fight, as I’ll discuss along the way: Moon Knight thinks T’Challa is Mephisto for a good portion of the fight, and so certainly fights him a different way than he would if he knew he was fighting Panther. Panther is probably holding back to some degree while trying to convince Moon Knight to stop. And Moon Knight’s real plan is not to win, but to feel enough pain that he summons the Phoenix.

The fight:

They jump at each other, and Marc punches T’Challa, which he partially blocks but still says “Hnngh!” in pain. Panther throws some energy blades at Marc, which Marc dodges, and Marc throws some crescents at Panther, which Panther breaks with his claws.

Marc hits Panther with his nunchucks. On the one hand, T’Challa’s armor absorbs kinetic energy, so none of Marc’s hits can really hurt him. On the other hand, T’Challa is sitting on the ground, his right arm up in a pretty defensive stance. If you want to argue that Panther is always really in control and is just holding back, it’s hard to explain how he would let himself get into this position, it’s the kind of position you only get in if you’re forced into it. Panther blasts Marc with a kinetic energy blast, which pushes Marc back a distance.

Panther takes the nunchucks and Marc grabs a sword. Panther sort of runs through the air and kicks through the sword, and then flips around, kicking Marc in the chest and getting some vibranium foam incapacitant on him. All this time he is telling Marc he wants to help, so that is an argument in favor of him not going all out. Marc easily cuts and rips off the goo off his chest.

Panther hits him in the face with what looks like the hilt of a laser dagger as opposed to the blade, although Marc does complain about the heat. Marc punches T’Challa in the face, then knees him in the face, and then kicks him in the shin, all of which again only charges Panther’s armor. T’Challa punches Marc in the face, eliciting a “Guugh!” from Moon Knight.

At this point in the fight, as the dialog shows, Marc still believes Panther is Mephisto. T’Challa says “So be it,” and again lending weight to the idea that he was holding back and that he is now going to take it more seriously. At this point, they have both hit each other five times, if you count both the nunchucks on the arm and T’Challa breaking the sword as hits.

T’Challa hits Moon Knight 3 times, really knocking him around. Marc hits him, then T’Challa hits Marc, then Marc hits T’Challa. The times when Marc hits Panther, again really he’s just charging up Panther’s armor, but Panther’s head does get knocked about too, so there is some effect.

Panther hits Marc 3 times in a row, and Marc is now down on the ground holding his head. It is around this point where Marc starts talking about praying to a god, and as we ultimately understand, this means he is praying to the Phoenix, not Khonshu. So, really, his strategic goal here is NOT to beat Panther, but to goad Panther into hitting him enough to summon the Phoenix. At this time, he also says he stopped thinking that T’Challa was Mephisto a few dozen punches ago, presumably exaggerating the number of punches since we haven’t seen that many; I personally think he figured out who Panther was around “so be it.”

Marc punches T’Challa with zero effect, and Panther hits him back twice, leaving Marc splayed on the ground. Panther won’t fight him any more, so Marc punches himself at least one more time, which is finally enough to summon the Phoenix.

So, how to unpack this?

We have what I hope that I have shown is a straightforward fight in one sense—Marc, with possibly some stats enhancement from Khonshu, but possibly less than normal due to Khonshu’s distractions, plus Marc’s normal skills and gear, fights against Black Panther, his normal Panther god/herb enhancement, T’Challa’s normal skills, and his normal gear.

There are then the following contexts: (1) Marc thinks Panther is Mephisto for a good chunk of the fight. (2) Panther is trying to convince Marc to give up rather than going all out for a good chunk of the fight. (3) Marc’s real goal is not to beat Panther but to get Panther to hurt him enough to summon the Phoenix.

The effect of (1) is for Panther to do better than he would otherwise, because Marc isn’t adapting his fighting to his actual opponent. The effect of (2) is for Marc to do better than he would otherwise, because Panther isn’t trying as hard as he could. The effect of (3) is that Marc is letting Panther hit him, and thus Panther is doing better than he would otherwise.

Personally, I think (1) and (2) probably mostly cancel each other out. (2) may have a little more weight than (1). But (3) is a pretty major factor on its own.

Let’s look at the tale of the tape again. Up until the time Panther said “so be it,” which I think is also around when Marc realized that he is T’Challa and not Mephisto, they had both hit each other 5 times. That sounds pretty even, but again, Panther’s kinetic-absorbing armor is a pretty massive advantage, so even with 5 hits each, Panther is doing more damage to Marc than Marc is to Panther.

After that, Panther hits Marc 9 times and Marc hits Panther 3 times. This is a pretty big difference from the first half of the fight. I think it shows that Panther has stopped holding back, but I think it also shows that arc is putting his Phoenix-summoning strategy; into full effect; he has now goaded Panther into unleashing on him, and largely stops fighting back.

So: who won the fight? Panther, clearly. But, partly because Marc wanted to get hit, in a sort of reversal or embracing of the Taskmaster fight where Taskmaster says Moon Knight never knew a punch he didn’t want to take.

Who would win a fight between Panther and Moon Knight without all this context? I think in a straight fight, Panther would still win. His gear is a massive, almost insurmountable advantage all by itself. I think their stats are about even when both are enhanced by their respective gods, but Panther also has a clear skill advantage over Moon Knight. This is not to say that Marc is a bad fighter; he is actually quite skilled. But in my estimation, Panther is one of the top-3 martial artists in Marvel (along with Iron Fist and Shang-Chi) out of the people we have consistent feats for (which is to say, excluding Marvel’s cosmic women Gamora, Moondragon, and Mantis, and a variety of Iron Fist and Shang-Chi secondary characters). So, with Panther’s skill and gear advantage he would win anyway.