“Folktales and myths, they've lasted for a reason. We tell them over and over because we keep finding truths in them, and we keep finding life in them.”
– Patrick Ness
Heracles, the Greek God of Strength.
Sun Wukong, the Chinese Monkey King.
For as long as man has existed, there have always been myths and legends passed down through generations. Epic tales and parables of fantastical happenings that seem incredulous to much of the modern world are an everlasting facet of human culture. Today’s combatants command belief and praise in their amazing death-defying adventures. For the first time, the show is dipping its toes into the wonderful, wide world of mythology. The East and West will face off in the most historically charged battle yet. Will the might of Heracles pull him through, or will the Monkey King’s mischief prove too much for his mettle? Find out in a DEATH BATTLE!
Before We Get Started...
First, while we will be using visual aid from other heracles and Sun Wukong media that aren’t the main stories, as is the case with the episode itself, the main focus will be on the original stories. As such, we won't be using feats from the Marvel version of Heracles or the Sun Wukong from Monkie Kid for example. Additionally, like the show itself, we’ll be focusing on the forms they had before their respective ascensions to higher status (Heracles gaining Godhood through apotheosis, Wukong gaining Buddhahood through achieving the state of nibbāna).
Secondly, due to the nature of both characters as mythological figures - and especially Sun Wukong’s connections to the Buddha - we will be dealing with philosophical and religious subject matter. If you feel uncomfortable about analyzing philosophical/religious media in context of a DEATH BATTLE then that’s completely understandable. While we will be trying to strictly limit this to talking about the stories in VS Debating terms, if you feel uncomfortable with analyzing philosophical/religious aspects tied to both characters, then ultimately we would recommend not reading this blog.
Thirdly, considering the fact that these characters have several volumes of media covering centuries of interpretation, tying into mythologies that have existed for over a millennia, and we have only been given two weeks to research, this blog will be relatively sparse in comparison to some others. The current and final state of this blog is a consensus reached after we have done all the research we could in a specified time period. It is entirely possible and almost likely that we have missed something, but we have tried to use the time allotted to us in a productive manner, in order to arrive at what we feel is the best possible answer.
Credit to Ad for some assistance with research.
Background
Heracles
The story of Heracles starts like that of many Greek Legends; Perseus, Io, Helen of Troy, even gods like Dionysus and Hermes, and many, many more… Zeus couldn’t stay faithful to his wife Hera, and people suffered as a result.
Enter Alcmene, royalty member of Tiryns and Mycenae, wife of Amphytron, granddaughter of Perseus, and most importantly to this story, the current woman whom Zeus is smitten with (spoiler, this will be the third instance of Zeus in this family tree). But as said before, Alcmene was married to Amphytron. So Zeus’s solution? Why, not to ignore his whim and stay with his wife, but to merely transform into Amphytron, force Helios to make the sun stay down for three days, and then trick Alcmene into sleeping with him, thereby conceiving Alcaeus.
…Hera didn’t take kindly to that. As is typical of Hera, however, she didn’t take issue with Zeus, but instead Alcmene and the unborn Alcaeus. The first thing she did was make sure Eurystheus, Alcaeus’s cousin, was born seven months into gestation instead of the full nine. See, Zeus declared after he bedded Alcmene that a child born of him would rule over everyone around him. So Hera went down and sped up Eurystheus’s birth so he would fulfill the prophecy and not Alcaeus, making the former a king. This will be important later.
And that’s not all she did. She attempted to make sure that Heracles wasn’t born at all. For when Alcmene was in labor, Hera forced Lucina (not that one), goddess of childbirth, to actively prevent Alcmene from giving birth. Alcmene was already struggling for seven days and nights due to how inhumanly big Alcaeus was as a baby, and with a goddess actively impeding him from coming out, it became even more difficult for her. Struggling as much as she was, Alcmene was nearing her deathbed, but her maid Galanthis managed to stop Lucina’s impediment, allowing Alcmene to give birth and recover. For Galanthis’ heroism and bravery in allowing these two to survive, Hera turned her into a weasel. Permanently. But at least Galanthis gets to stay in the royal family.
It’s at this point that Alcmene realized that Hera has it out for her and her baby, and in an attempt to appease her, she changed the baby’s name to Heracles, meaning “for the glory of Hera”.
…it did not work.
Hera eventually succeeded in gaining the upper hand over Heracles, driving him mad and soon forcing him into a position that required him to perform twelve labors of penance (originally ten, two more were added later). These twelve labors would put Heracles and his skills to the test, often requiring him to slay or retrieve a powerful creature, or perhaps acquire an item of great significance. These would bring him into contact with many key figures in mythology, such as the titan Atlas, bringer of fire Prometheus, and the master of the underworld, Hades. Despite his many trials though, Heracles ultimately succeeded in all twelve of them, growing stronger all the time and using what he gained and learned throughout to succeed in each trial.
Heracles ultimately went on to partake in many other adventures and journeys in his life, but eventually even he met his fate. An enemy of old, the legendary Hydra, bit back from the grave and Heracles was killed by the poison he had used in so many of his battles. However, while this was the end of Heracles’ mortal life, he ascended to a position as a god living on Mount Olympus. And even with his tale told, he continues on as one of the most legendary figures in mythology and storytelling in general. Be it by the Greek name Heracles or the Roman Hercules, few can match the legacy that he left behind.
Sun Wukong
Emerging from a rock on Flower Fruit Mountain, a mystical stone monkey was born. He bowed to the cardinal directions… and shot a light from his eyes all the way up to the Jade Palace, creating a ruckus in Heaven. So began a history of the Monkey King pissing off his superiors.
The stone monkey spent his early days with the other monkeys on the mountain, declaring himself their “Handsome Monkey King” due to his bravery and boldness. After a while, the Monkey King began to fear the prospect of death, and so decided to seek immortality. He set on a journey for an immortal Taoist sage, who would give him the name “The Great Sage Awakened to the Void”. Or as you might better know him, Sun Wukong. The sage taught Wukong the Art of the Earthly Multitudes, a powerful set of abilities which granted the immortality he desired. However, Wukong wasn’t exactly the most discreet, and he ended up getting kicked out before the secret to his immortality could spread.
Monkey returned to his home kingdom, and decided to form an army. Seeking a proper weapon of his own, he visited the Dragon King, who he asked to borrow (read: forcefully steal) a weapon from. After trying out and discarding all of his best magical weapons, the Dragon King was told that the ancient stick by which the depths of the Heavenly River is fixed was shining with a light, meaning Wukong might have been destined to use it. The Monkey King casually picked it up and transformed it to his will, further horrifying the Dragon King into giving Wukong some cool armor to get on his good side.
Later on, Wukong was kidnapped and dragged into the underworld. This made Monkey angry, since, y’know, kinda violates the whole immortality thing, so he rampaged through the underworld to file a complaint. After scaring the king into giving him the Book of Death, he obliterated his name and the names of as many monkeys as he could find from the ledger. In case you were counting, this makes him doubly immortal.
After the Jade Emperor received tons of reports about Wukong, he decided to do something about it. In the meantime, the Stone Monkey decided that he was important enough to merit a proper place in the heavens and demanded a position, leading to them giving him the lowest rank possible of Pi-Ma-Wen (official in charge of horses). Thinking that it was a high position, the Monkey King lived contently in heaven until finding out the truth of his lowly rank. Wukong went on a rampage, forcing the Jade Emperor to just give in and give him the empty title he wanted, of Great Sage Equal to Heaven. Eventually, he was charged with guarding the heavenly peach trees, which would grant immortality.
Being the mischievous guy that he is, he ate almost all of them, making him triply immortal. Then he got drunk from the alcohol of the gods and ate gourds filled with pills of immortality, making him quadruply immortal. Realizing his mistake after sobering up, he ran back to his kingdom, leading heaven to send all of their troops to defeat him… which failed. Finally, they were able to capture him, and brought him back to heaven, where they planned to burn him into ashes inside Laozi’s oven. However, Wukong hid in a section without flame, and survived, though the smoke permanently inflamed his eyes. After this, he caused such a ruckus in the heavens that the Jade Emperor had to call Buddha, who sealed Wukong under a mountain for 500 years. He was eventually set free by the monk Tang Sanzang (also called by the Sanskrit title of Tripitaka) to aid him in his Journey to the West.
Equipment
Heracles
Club
One of Heracles’ most well-known weapons is a club made of olive-wood, and he has used it against various enemies. In his first labor, Heracles used it to stun the Nemean lion before he strangled it with his bare hands. Some sources say he cut the club himself before going to take on the beast. In his tenth labor, Heracles one-shotted the two-headed hound Orthrus with the club. In some interpretations, he also used it to battle the Lernaean Hydra.
Nemean Lion Pelt
Heracles’ first labor was to slay the Nemean lion. Unfortunately, the lion’s hide was invulnerable to weapons such as arrows and swords, with the only thing that can penetrate the hide being its own claws. To kill the lion, Heracles stunned it momentarily with his club, and then strangled it with his immense strength. After killing it, the demigod skinned the lion and used its fur as a makeshift cape, shielding himself from any weapon that could harm him. This tool has been proven to work quite effectively, having protected Heracles from an onslaught from Cerberus, nullifying every attack the dog tried to make.
Golden Sword
Heracles was no stranger to using a blade as a weapon. Among several other gifts from the gods, he was given a sword by Hermes. For his second labor, he was tasked with killing the Lernaean Hydra, a serpentine water monster famous for having multiple heads. The hydra was a difficult monster to slay due to the fact that for every head that got cut off, two more had regrown in its place. However, Heracles got around this regeneration by having his nephew Iolaus cauterize the stumps with flames. The central head was immortal, but Heracles defeated it nonetheless by lopping it off and leaving it trapped under a boulder.
Ancient depictions vary on what the weapon looked like, and some sources and art depict him with a golden scimitar during his slaying of the Hydra. It’s possible he used multiple blades throughout his career.
Hydra Poison Arrows
Heracles learned the art of archery from Eurytus, receiving a bow and arrow from Apollo afterwards. After killing the Lernaean Hydra, he dipped his arrows into the monster’s poisonous blood, making the arrows poisonous as well. A single shot from one of these arrows is enough to kill beings other than gods, such as giants. While unneeded, the arrows’ piercing power is nothing to scoff at, as they were strong enough to penetrate the metal feathers of the Stymphalian birds, and even the flesh of gods like Hades and Hera.
In fact, the arrow doesn’t need to pierce its target for the poison to take effect. Skin contact is sufficient enough; the hydra’s poison is so potent, it even contributed to Heracles’ eventual death after blood laced with it was smeared on the inside of a tunic that he put on. While it didn’t immediately kill the demigod, due to being unused for decades and diluted from Nessus the centaur’s blood, the hydra’s blood was capable of tearing through Heracles’ skin, exposing his bones, boiling his blood, and melting his marrow. The pain was so unbearable, Heracles had no choice but to burn himself alive, killing his mortal half (though he did become a god as a result).
Shield
Another piece of Heracles’ arsenal is his shield that was forged by Hephaestus. Made of enamel, ivory, electrum, and gold, the shield has never been broken or crushed. Decorating the shield are personifications of Fear and Strife, and snake heads that would clash their teeth whenever Heracles fights. He would equip this shield in his battle against Cycnus, the son of Ares. It was strong enough to withstand attacks from Cycnus, and even his father Ares as well.
Rattles
Created by the God Hephaestus and gifted to Heracles by Athena, the demigod possesses noise makers that can make an extremely awful, loud noise. He used this for his sixth labor to deal with the Stymphalian birds.
Armor
While most classical artwork likes to depict Heracles either in the nude or with just the Nemean lion’s pelt, he did receive a golden breastplate from Hephaestus and a robe from Athena.
Sun Wukong
Ruyi Jingu Bang
Sun Wukong’s iconic staff. Originally a gigantic iron pillar in the kingdom of Ao Guang by which the Heavenly River was fixed, Sun Wukong took it after none of the weapons of the Dragon King of the East Sea met his standards. It is immensely heavy, weighing around 17,550 lbs, yet is able to grow or shrink to whatever size the Monkey King commands it, from the size of a needle to tall enough to reach the 33rd Heaven. He often stores it in a shrunken state in his ear. In addition to its size-changing ability, it can magically open any lock Wukong points it at, as well as interact with non-physical, “non-existent” spirits (or even Wukong himself when he was a soul in Hell).
Armor
Monkey’s signature set of armor, given to him by the Dragon Kings of the Three Oceans. It consists of cloud-treading shoes, a golden cuirass, and a phoenix-feathered cap.
Abilities
Heracles
Hand-to-Hand Combat
Thanks to his godlike strength, Heracles easily became an expert in hand-to-hand combat. The most popular hand-to-hand sport in Ancient Greece was wrestling, which involved grappling techniques such as clinch fighting, throws, takedowns, joint locks, pins, and other grappling holds and submission maneuvers. The demigod would base his fighting style on wrestling, allowing him to defeat powerful foes such as the impervious Nemean lion, the immortal giant, Antaeus, and the three-headed guard dog of the underworld, Cerberus.
Archery
Heracles is an expert marksman with a bow and arrow, having trained with King Eurytus in some tellings and Radamanthus in others. Aside from his club, the bow and arrow are the demigod’s most well known weapons, especially since the arrows have been dipped in the blood of the Lernaean Hydra. With his bow and arrows, Heracles has slain various foes, including the Stymphalian birds, the monster Geryon, the giants Porphyrion and Ephialtes, and the centaur Nessus.
Immense Strength
When you think of Heracles, or at least his Roman counterpart, the first thing you associate with the demigod is his super strength. Contrary to popular belief, Heracles was not born with super strength despite being a son of Zeus. Instead, he received it as a direct result of being breastfed by Hera after Athena tricked her into taking care of him. Even though Hera only took care of baby Heracles for a very short time before chucking him back to Earth, her milk gave the demigod enough strength to rival the Greek Gods. Heracles’ super strength allowed him to perform impressive feats that made him famous throughout history. These include holding up the sky, fighting on par with some of the gods, and wrestling Zeus to a stalemate.
Immortality
Herc's arguably most powerful aspect is simply the nature of his lineage. Although Heracles' mortal half may be destroyed, this is more akin to a shedding of skin to him than truly dying. His immortal half will remain, making him virtually unkillable by normal means, similar to many other immortals in Greek mythology.
Sun Wukong
Martial Arts
Sun Wukong has been training with some of the best of the best in his respective universe, training with gods and great warriors. This has enabled him to be one of the best fighters in his universe, able to tangle with a clone of himself that had precognition with little issue.
Enhanced Senses
Sun Wukong possesses amazing perceptive abilities. He is so perceptive that he is capable of seeing the wings of a dragonfly from up to a thousand miles away, and hearing things coming from both Heaven and the Underworld.
Art of the Earthly Multitudes
Upon acquiring his first form of immortality, Sun Wukong learned that he would beset by three calamities of thunder, fire, and wind from the Heavens, seeking to claim his life for defying death. Desperate to escape this fate, Wukong mastered the 地煞數, or the Art of the Earthly Multitudes, consisting of 72 different transformations granting different abilities to overcome these calamities. Each is performed using a magic sign.
Shapeshifting
One of Wukong’s most well-used abilities, this magic sign allows him to shapeshift into anything he desires, such as pine trees, forks, and animals. Wukong can utilize these transformations freely, whether it be for solving a puzzle or for combat, such as when he transformed into a three-headed, six-armed beast in his battle against Prince Nezha. He can’t just transform into objects and creatures, but also elements as well, such as the time he dispersed into intangible ether for a quick exit. He can also alter individual portions of his body, such as making his legs more durable.
Wukong’s shapeshifting isn’t limited to himself, either. He can transmute other beings and objects the same way he can transform himself, such as turning Zhu Bajie’s body into that of a little girl’s after Pigsy fails at the transformation himself, or turning four logs into duplicates of himself, Tripitaka, Zhu Bajie, and Sha Wujing.
Wukong can even use his own unique powers while transformed. As an example, while shapeshifted into a fly, he’s able to pull off a hair and transform it like he can in his regular form. His shapeshifting abilities should probably work the same way as how he transforms his hairs, so the traits mentioned below may be assumed to carry over.
Hairs
After learning the Art of Earthly Multitudes, Wukong returned to the Monkey Kingdom, where he found that a monster had taken his monkeys hostage. In retaliation, he plucked a couple of hairs off his body and turned them into hundreds of clones in the first demonstration of this technique. Wukong himself claims that his clones can make even more clones, and that he can use this to multiply into billions if he wants to. Just on his own, he can create many thousands of clones at once by chewing some hairs up, then using the individual bits as all their own clones. He sent these ones into battle against Nezha and Heaven’s forces, whom they were able to defeat.
Each of these clones has Wukong’s powers and skill, though they do seem to vary in strength. They also have a copy of his staff. Wukong has also used this to swap out his opponents weapons with mundane objects. Additionally, he’s often substituted his real body with that of a clone in order to escape, or for surprise attacks.
He’s said to have eighty-four thousand hairs on his body and to be able to change them into “whatever shape or substance he desired,” so this isn’t limited to clones; he’s made random objects such as a paintbrush and a golden gourd with them before, as well as living beings, like a special insect that can make people fall asleep once it crawls into your nose (gross), a yellow hound, or a thunder spirit (this possibly just refers to a clone Wukong). At least in the case of the gourd, these objects weigh the same as the hair they’re transformed from.
Life-Saving Hairs
A collection of three hairs given to Monkey by the Bodhisattva Guanyin. The specifics of their powers are unknown, but they are said to be particularly stiff hairs that, when pulled from his body, will alleviate Wukong from his situation in even the most hopeless circumstances. Wukong has used them to escape from a magical burning vase, the flames of which threatened to kill him.
Barriers
By drawing a circle around him and others on the ground, Wukong can create a barrier for protection against any harm that may come. However, that protection won’t help if Wukong or anyone else steps out of the circle.
Reflection
Wukong can reflect various elements such as fire, thunder and water attacks with his eother magic or physicality.
Size Manipulation
Wukong’s ability to manipulate his own size is incredible, both when it comes to making himself bigger and making himself smaller. If he wills it, the Monkey King is capable of shrinking down to be as small as a hair, or pulling an Ant-Man and growing himself to be large enough to fill the entirety of the universe. Even more like Ant-Man, he can crawl inside someone in a shrunken state and transform back to his regular self to deal damage.
Flight
Beyond just using his boots or magic, Wukong himself has the ability to fly.
Body Freezing
With a single point of his finger, Monkey can cast the magic of immobilization, instantly freezing his opponents in place. This immobility can last for over a day.
Air Manipulation
Wukong has the ability to manipulate air in a wide variety of ways. He can use it offensively by creating dangerous winds, and can use his own breath to shake mountains and uproot entire forests. When it comes to movement, Wukong has used his manipulation of wind to enable himself and others to fly through the air.
Water Manipulation
With magic, the Monkey King can control water, which can be used to part away rivers and stir up oceans. He is also unable to drown.
Weather Manipulation
Sun Wukong is able to create massive storms and tsunamis, capable of affecting the entire Earth.
Summoning
Wukong has shown to be capable of summoning gods and deities to aid him in whatever situation he may find himself in. This was shown when he summoned the Dragon King of the Northern Ocean to aid him.
Invisibility
With magic, Wukong is able to conceal his body, making him effectively invisible to the average eye.
Spatial Manipulation
Wukong has the ability to shorten the distance between two separate points in order to make traveling easier and more effective. By using the “Shortening the Ground” spell, he was capable of transporting his group from their location to a city, at such high speed that they seemed like nothing more than a gust of wind.
Astral Projection
The Monkey King is not just limited to his physical body, and has demonstrated the ability to project his “true spirit” self from his body upon command. Despite being a spirit, he is still capable of fighting as he normally does and can physically interact with things, such as his staff. Additionally, other heavenly beings have shown the ability to reincarnate from their true spirits, such as when Zhu Bajie was reduced to his true spirit and reincarnated himself on Earth through a sow’s womb.
Fiery Golden Eyes
Obtained from his 49 days within Lao Zi’s furnace, Wukong’s now inflamed eyes have the ability to see through shapeshifter’s disguises and illusions. Even before the days in Lao Zi’s furnace, Wukong’s eyes could shoot lasers. Right after hatching from his stone egg, he shot golden beams from his eyes which went right from the top of Mount Huaguo on Earth to the Palace of the Polestar in Heaven.
Immortality
Sun Wukong's most important ability is without a doubt his immortality, which he has in several forms. After eating multiple foods that grant immortality, cultivating a formula for it as well as having his name taken off the Book of Death, Wukong became incredibly difficult to kill, with an eternal lifespan and a nigh-indestructible body that is capable of surviving otherwise fatal wounds, as well as regenerating. However, if he were to be killed, Wukong has 72 extra lives in stock in accordance with his 72 transformations that must be dealt with, before he can be truly destroyed.
To Wukong, getting his limbs or head removed is little more than a joke to compose a poem about. He can call severed limbs back to his body, or just grow new ones; after getting decapitated, he first tries to call his head back to him, but when a spell is cast on it, he just makes a new one. Wukong’s regeneration can overlap with his duplication, since if he’s cut apart, each severed piece will become a new Wukong.
Resistances
Sun Wukong boasts a variety of resistances to different abilities, including:
Feats
Heracles
Overall
Completed the 12 Labors, impossible tasks meant to humiliate (or kill) Heracles, including:
Slaying the Nemean lion, Lernaean Hydra, and the Stymphalian birds
Directing a river to clean out the Augean stables
Capturing the Ceryneian Hind, Cretan Bull, and Erymanthian Boar
Retrieving Hippolyta’s belt (she gave it willingly, as she was impressed with him)
Killing Geryon
Taming the man-eating mares of Diomedes
Bringing Cerberus back to the Underworld after defeating and capturing it
Sailed on the Argo and was said to have been able to solve the entire adventure by himself
Saved Prometheus from an absolutely nightmarish fate of having his liver eaten every day by an eagle (The Greek gods had some messed up punishments)
Rescued Theseus from his punishment in the Underworld but left Pirithous behind (he deserved it though)
Exploited Antaeus’s immortality and killed him in a wrestling match.
Alongside Iolaus, defeated both Ares and his son Cycnus.
Tricked Atlas into taking the sky back.
Fought alongside the Olympian gods against the giants, notably killing Alcyoneus, Porphyrion, and Ephialtes
Sacked the city of Troy
Power
Held up the immeasurable weight of the firmament in Atlas’ place
Apollo was powerful enough to threaten the entire universe’s existence when fighting Poseidon (892.5x Universal - see Cosmology section below)
In a battle at Pylos, wounded Hera and Hades with his arrows
Other sources add Poseidon and Apollo to this fight at Pylos, who Heracles is able to evenly contend with while fighting Hades, and some also mention a fight with Ares there
Wrestled the god of death, Thanatos, in order to reclaim Alcestis’ soul
Ares is powerful enough to move Mars (Small Star to Solar System Level)
Speed
In some versions of his tenth labor, shot an arrow at the Sun, which exists seven heavenly spheres away from Earth, because it was too hot (yes really) (2.5 quintillion c)
Managed to stab an infuriated Ares in the thigh before he could block, who:
Can travel across seven spheres in a short amount of time (2.5 quintillion c)
Is fast enough to crash down from Olympus “like a lightning bolt”
Comparable to Zeus, who:
Can send shockwaves across the entire firmament by simply nodding his head (29 quintillion c)
Can process and see the entire cosmos at once (Potentially 1 quattuorvigintillion c, though the method is tentative)
Comparable to Poseidon, who:
Comparable to Athena, who can fly to Olympus from Earth (2.9 quintillion c)
Durability
Barely withstood hydra poison seeping into his body and ripping off his skin
The result of Hera breastfeeding him created the entire Milky Way Galaxy
Heracles was able to ingest this milk
Survived wrestling with Cerberus
Wears the hide of the Nemean lion, which not even he himself could pierce
Sun Wukong
Overall
A major inspiration for countless Western and Eastern stories
Pissed on the Buddha’s hand
Gained immortality at least seven different times
Defeated the armies of Heaven
Traveled to the Western Heaven alongside Sanzang, Zhu Bajie, and Sha Wujing
Fought off tons of demon lords in order to protect his comrades
Beat up a demon who wanted to fuck him
Managed to scare the four Great Dragons into camaraderie
Power
Fought all of the heavenly warriors, including numerous constellations
Participated in a battle that dimmed the cosmos with debris and disturbed Heaven and Earth
Fought on par with, and eventually defeated Nezha
Claimed he can move the moon with his bare hands
Capable of growing as big as the universe itself (3-54x Universal - see Cosmology section below)
Supported two mountains that anchor the universe while moving at the speed of a meteor (Multi-Solar System)
When Goku and Beerus clashed, their punches created shockwaves that nearly tore apart the entire universe! (Sun Wukong name drop afterward)
Speed
Grew his staff from the size of a needle to one breaching the 33rd Heaven and 18th layer of Hell (880 quadrillion c)
Capable of traveling from the human world to that of the Underworld, which is separated by a space as wide as Heaven
Has flown to heaven and back incredibly quickly multiple times throughout the story
Can travel 108,000 li (54,000 km) in one somersault
Implies that he can quickly pull the moon down from the edge of heaven
Capable of fighting with thousands of flying cudgels at once
Jumped from the Buddha’s hand to the edge of the universe (which was also Buddha’s hand, it’s weird)
Durability
Survived being trapped under a mountain for 500 years
Carried a demon child weighing 1000 tons with ease
Survived supporting the weight of two heavenly mountains while running
Defeated a copy of himself, confirming he can withstand the amount of force that he dishes out
Survived clashing with Nezha with enough force to shake the entire planet
Has completely no-sold all sorts of weapons, fire, and thunderbolts; here’s a second mention of this feat from later in the novel
Could go for a thousand nights without sleep and never feel fatigue
Weaknesses
Heracles
Heracles is a powerful fighter and can be rather intelligent, but much like other Greek heroes, he has a massive fatal flaw. While most have the flaw of hubris, Herc’s biggest weakness is his wrath, to the point where it literally ties back to his mother’s name. He can be affected by magical means, and in some cases can get agitated easily, such as the time he shot at the Sun while crossing an extremely large and hot desert (something that, surprisingly, intrigued Helios rather than made him mad), or killing Augeas after the latter refused to pay Heracles for cleaning his stables. He even killed his teacher, Linus, for the sin of not succeeding in teaching Heracles the arts.
Heracles’ biggest problem, however, is that he often uses his own strength to get through most problems that he’s having. While he has the intelligence to figure out what he needs to do, it’s usually his own demigod powers that let him actually solve the issue he’s having.
Sun Wukong
Sun Wukong is incredibly powerful, but that power often goes to his head. He will often get into fights where he has no chance of winning on his own, often leading to himself or his allies getting captured. His temper also can play a big role in this; for instance, Tripitaka or Zhu Bajie will sometimes say the wrong thing or remind him of his own failures, causing him to rush off to prove himself. Wukong also has a history of falling for unexpected tricks that take him out of the fight, such as the True Fire of Samadhi, the pain-inducing poison sting of the scorpion demoness, and the cave demon’s wind.
Summary
Heracles
Advantages:
Stronger
Faster
Hydra arrows are extremely useful against Wukong
Wukong has no direct means of killing his immortal body
Rattles could potentially counter Wukong's clones
Has faced and defeated other immortals with similar abilities to Wukong
Has managed to consistently exploit weaknesses in immortality
Actually liked by his pantheon’s fellow gods (except Hera)
Disadvantages:
Less versatile abilities
Has very little direct means of killing Wukong
Much less experienced and likely less intelligent
Can potentially run out of arrows (even though he owns decades worth)
Hera. Just…Hera.
Sun Wukong
Advantages:
More versatile set of abilities
Heracles has very few ways of directly killing him
More experienced and likely smarter
His skin can’t be pierced
Greater range
Has beaten enemies that fight similarly to Heracles before
Is basically Goku (no one can beat Goku)
Disadvantages:
Weaker
Slower
Has no way of killing Heracles’ immortal half
Can be separated from a huge part of his immortality by having it removed from his body
Hydra arrows can potentially incapacitate him, as he would be unable to resist the pain inflicted by them
Has a limited stock of lives that can be overtaxed
Seems to inexplicably piss off everybody he meets
Before We Get to Verdicts
Cosmology
Greek
In Greek cosmology, there are four main realms, which are Heaven (where Olympus is located), Earth, the underworld and Tartarus, the lowest level of the cosmos. In addition to this, it was postulated that a cosmological structure was contained within a sphere which would rotate around the Earth, which was encased within its own sphere. For the timeframe given for these Greek myths to take from, we are using the interpretation of 10 cosmological spheres, as postulated by Pythagoras. Later philosophical interpretations would place the number at 27, or even 55 spheres. The "Firmament" when used in reference generally refers to the whole cosmological structure of the Greek mythos, as the sphere that surrounds everything inside. Think of Greek cosmology like Matryoshka dolls, where one universal structure is contained and surrounded within another.
In addition, given the fact that the spheres would surround each other, that means that they must be long enough to wrap around the innermost sphere. Adjusting for volume, this would make the Greek cosmology 892.5x larger than our own.
Chinese
In Buddhist cosmology (which is used in JTTW), there are three predominant realms in the overarching universe, being the human realm, the underworld and the heavens. Within these realms are layered subsections totalling in 54 layers in total, however for the purposes of the blog, we are going with the cosmology being 3x our universe’s size, as the evidence for each individual layer being a universal construct rather than subsections of one universe is middling at best. If this were to be used, it should be used as a high end for the cosmology. Within the axis of the universe is Mount Sumeru, which could be argued to physically support the structure of the cosmology.
Verdicts
Team Heracles
Sun Wukong has grown something of a reputation for his insanely powerful and bizarre abilities. While he is still no doubt an incredible foe and, on paper, he has more advantages with regard to his versatility, the God of Strength has him outmatched in several key areas, as well as having the tools he needs to come out as the last immortal standing.
Stats
Before we delve into the nitty gritty about their abilities and respective immortalities, it is imperative that we make clear who has the advantage in raw numbers, beginning with strength. In this category, Heracles manages to pull it off in several orders of magnitude.
Both Heracles and Sun Wukong are able to scale to their own universal constructs, albeit through different means that you might expect. Heracles is comparable to other Greek gods such as Apollo and Poseidon, who were going to destroy the entire universe in their battle. This should reasonably scale, especially since Zeus had to physically intervene in order to stop them from continuing the fight before it became too disastrous, and Heracles triumphed while fighting multiple gods at the same time, including Poseidon and Hades. Hades himself has been compared to Zeus in his domain and even has been called ‘the Zeus of the Underworld’ as a title. Heracles was also able to lift the firmament better than Atlas could, with Atlas being punished by Zeus in order to carry the body of the castrated Uranus. Heracles also should reasonably scale to the gods and Titans, especially since the gods required Heracles’ help in order to defeat the giants, who were going to overthrow the gods as the gods overthrew the Titans, meaning scaling to the gods for Heracles, and therefore scaling to their universal level feats, should be relatively well established. Sun Wukong, meanwhile, is able to grow himself large enough to fill the entire universe. Both of them have rather famous feats of lifting the cosmos, yet neither are likely to be legitimately universal in strength. This is because the universe weighs vastly less than what you might expect, due to the large amounts of empty space that occupies it. Although, with regard to Wukong's side, the Mount Sumeru feat has contextual problems that are impossible to ignore, which we will get into.
The mountains are stated to be within the Earth's axis (Earth in this context is likely exchangeable for the world) and are called "the pillars of Heaven". Sun Wukong has once supported the weight of these mountains, so the logic follows that he would be supporting the literal weight of the entire macrocosm. The issue with this is that "axis" is a measurement in coordinates, not a mechanical function. What it is saying is that the mountains are located within the center of the world, instead of reaching across the entire cosmology. The other facet to this text is saying that they are the pillars of heaven, but this is a very vague and flowery description to just ascribe that to supporting the entire mass of the cosmology, and certain other factors make this rather generous interpretation less likely. For instance, Mount Sumeru has a stated height, per several Buddhist philosophers, of 80,000 yojanas. One yojana is defined as having an estimated range between three and seventeen and a half miles - using the best possible interpretation would make Mount Sumeru 1,400,000 miles high. Quite large, but not nearly enough to reach across the universe. Additionally, in the text where Wukong performs this feat, nothing makes mention of the supposed cosmic levels of weight he would be carrying. The fact that Wukong is able to actually move these mountains without affecting the universe or heavens further strains the argument.
Beyond that, we still have to directly compare the cosmological structures that they are being scaled to. Above the verdicts is an explanation for the cosmologies of both worlds and how they are being interpreted in this comparison. Scaling to the Greek cosmology would mean Heracles can scale to characters that can destroy our universe 892.5x times over, while Wukong would scale to 3 universe sized realms; being generous to him would amp that up to 54x universal. This means that Heracles is 16.5x stronger than Wukong at worst, and realistically nearly 300 times more powerful. Regardless of which end you use, this means that Heracles is capable of swiftly destroying Wukong's body and overpowering him when need be.
As far as speed goes, the demigod also comes out on top. Taking into account Wukong growing his staff from Earth to the Underworld and the Heavens, then scaling that back to his speed, he could potentially move at 800 quadrillion times the speed of light. However, Heracles scaling to Zeus surpasses this by dozens of times, with him being able to send shockwaves across the entire firmament by simply nodding his head. Zeus nodding his head is an act that should have been done with extreme ease - at least more ease than Zeus actually wrestling Heracles - meaning that Heracles should reasonably scale. As the firmament and Olympus are on the outer sphere of the cosmos, which encircle each other, this would have had to cross the entire diameter, putting the feat at 29 quintillion times the speed of light, over 36 times faster than Wukong. Even other gods such as Ares and Athena have feats putting them at nearly 3 quintillion times the speed of light, due to them traversing the spaces between realms in the cosmology. Ares is able to whirl his celestial sphere (Mars) throughout the seven heavens, by himself without any particular aid from a vehicle, because Mars is the mortal exemplification of his vehicle. Even without this feat, both Ares and Athena have easily crashed down from Olympus to other realms, with Ares even doing so as quick as lighting, which could potentially raise the result even higher. Zeus is likely even faster than these feats, given how he is capable of perceiving and transcending every point in the entire universe as the exemplification of the quintessential elements making up reality (Earth, Air, Water, Fire, and Aether).
Immortality
While Heracles has the advantage in raw physical ability, this wouldn't mean anything if he has no way of putting Wukong down. However, as it turns out, he is fully capable of doing that as well. To begin with, while Wukong is very, very hard to kill, it's not impossible to do so. In order to kill Wukong, the Chinese philosopher and alchemist in heaven, Laozi, designed a plan to separate Wukong from the source of his immortality which coalesced into a single mass in his stomach. According to Laozi, the reason why it was so hard to separate Wukong from his immortality was because his body’s hardness was analogous to diamond, and hence couldn’t be quickly destroyed. Considering Heracles’ strength advantage, he could overcome this barrier rather quickly, and eventually, given enough time, he could overcome Wukong’s immortality. The common counter argument against this is to say that Wukong’s immortality has since been absorbed into his body, even though there is no direct claim in the text with regard to this, and Laozi thought it was sufficient to simply destroy Wukong’s body over a period of days in order to kill him permanently, even though in this time period the mass should have reasonably digested sufficiently enough to be absorbed throughout Wukong’s body. If it could work according to Laozi when he tried it, there is no reason why it wouldn’t work if Heracles consistently just destroys Wukong’s body over and over again. The text also has no indication that this elixir was ever successfully refined out of Wukong’s body in a manner that made him more resilient, especially given the fact that Wukong was, for the most part, shielded from the majority of the flames in the furnace, because otherwise he would have died. The fact that Wukong would have been killed by a gradual process of generating energy around his body in a manner that couldn’t instantly destroy his body, yet eventually kill him, and Wukong had to avoid this fate by staying in a portion of the furnace that was cooler than the rest, makes it even more clear that Heracles could potentially overcome Wukong’s immortality. Considering Laozi, perhaps the most erudite Chinese scholar on immortality, thought that this process would kill Wukong (even with the immortalities Wukong had, including the 72 lives, outside of the coalesced mass in his body) is extraordinarily telling and deserves to be noted.
To add to this, Sun Wukong has a set amount of lives that can be expended, which directly correlates with his 72 transformations. This is important because it does imply that Wukong can be killed, and from there it becomes a test of whether Heracles can destroy Wukong's body enough times to put him down for good. The answer to that, is that he likely can. In one of his labors, Heracles had to capture the Elaphos Kerynitis - a sacred deer whose hide Heracles had to retrieve. During this labor, the Greek hero had to chase the deer for a full year straight before finally catching it, meaning that he has more than enough stamina to continuously defeat Wukong 72 times.
To further aid this argument, Heracles has faced and defeated immortal beings before, such as with Hades, Ares, the Hydra and Alcyoneus. He has experience dealing with nigh-unkillable beings before, so he can certainly find ways to work around Wukong's immortality. To contrast, Wukong has no real means of killing Heracles, with his raw durability exceeding Wukong's strength and having his own immortality to boot. This form of immortality includes being able to wrestle the very God of Death itself, Thanatos, and being able to reclaim any souls claimed by him. Heracles also retains an immortal core descended from Zeus himself, remaining unkillable even without being apotheosized (transfigured into a pure deity). Heracles has also stated that in the case where Thanatos does not appear to him in order to claim someone’s soul, he could physically go down into Hades and retrieve their soul himself. This means that Heracles has the advantage of entering and exiting the realm of Hades as he wishes, and combining this with the fact that Heracles himself died only because he wished in order to dine with the Gods on Olympus, this makes him extraordinarily hard to kill. Although it may be argued that shedding Heracles’ mortal ‘shell’ may count as a victory condition in Death Battle’s eyes, the fact that Heracles continued to cognitively exist even before being physically ascended to Godhood (undergoing theosis), as well as being able to act as a rational agent, should be sufficient enough for Heracles to continue to fight. It’s as if Heracles has a skeleton of immortality that could pop out as his metaphorical flesh is burned away, capable of fighting as Heracles normally would.
Abilities and Skills
While Sun Wukong is very experienced and intelligent, so is Heracles. He can be incredibly tactical and perceptive if he needs to, and his speed advantage means that he can better use and apply his skills and strategies while shutting down Wukong’s. If Wukong were to create clones, Heracles could use his rattles to immobilize them, then take them out swifter than Wukong can create them. Wukong's clones could theoretically grow to absurd levels, but if Heracles can deal with them faster than Wukong can create them, then he can get past that hurdle. If Wukong tried to keep a distance by flying, Heracles could shoot him with the hydra pointed arrows, which could make him feel anguish that even the Gods themselves fear without having to pierce skin. If Wukong tried to take his own arrows from him and use them against him, Heracles could reflect it with his pelt made from the Nemean lion. Heracles is well equipped enough to deal with Wukong’s trickery and abilities, and has the physical prowess to take him down. Wukong has also shown the incapability of keeping a fight going when struck by a particularly potent poison, with Heracles’ hydra venom being able to convince immortals to even give up their immortality when they are otherwise capable of taking extraneous acts of torture, such as being eaten as babies (such was the case of Cronus eating his children), and the eternal torture of the Titans, and not giving up their immortality. The fact that Wukong has to retain some sort of cognizance in order to use his more particularly useful abilities makes it so that he can’t keep using those abilities once he’s stricken by a hydra arrow, effectively making his cloning and shapeshifting null. Wukong’s ability to possibly steal Heracles’ equipment is not out of question either, but considering the fact that Heracles is faster and stronger, and would be on his edge due to the fact that he is facing (to his point of view) a trickster deity, and was capable of physically wrestling even death away, he should be able to physically overpower Wukong if he needs to reclaim his equipment. This, coupled with the fact that Heracles is capable of also administering the hydra poison with even minute skin contact should be enough. Wukong would not know what the hydra poison does until Heracles uses it on him, and by then that copy of Wukong could do nothing, with Heracles obviously being on the edge if Wukong ever tries to use an arrow against him for any purpose. The stats advantage should help Heracles immeasurably in this regard, and Heracles should be smart enough to exploit any equipment he has as well as slick enough in order for it to not be used against him.
It also should be noted that a majority of Wukong’s abilities are completely useless in this fight. His immunities to fire, lightning, water, and being able to see through illusions, while useful, would not prove fruitful in his fight with Heracles. His ability to make someone sleep is through using some bugs that have to physically crawl into someone’s nose, which is not going to happen in a fight where someone is faster and stronger than him, while also looking for any signs of being tricked. Wukong’s barriers and binding spells have never proven to work on characters as strong as Heracles, with Heracles being able to also break through magical bindings and barriers that are binding gods, such as when Heracles freed the Titan Prometheus from Zeus’ punishment.
Wukong’s main advantages would be his clones, his ability to shapeshift into other elements, and his immortality. The main problems with these would be: Heracles’ ability to take out the clones faster than Wukong being able to make them, especially with Heracles’ speed and strength advantage, with the fact being that Wukong has never exponentially duplicated himself within a fight (at least in the text) to create billions of copies of himself, and the text seems to indicate that some clones can be weaker than the prime Wukong himself, making the idea that the clones scale directly to Wukong very tentative at best. Add to the fact that Wukong has to physically take a piece of hair off of himself and blow on it to make a clone, it would be extremely hard for Wukong to make any meaningful amount of clones while Heracles is attacking him with arrows that could make him incapable of doing anything else due to pain exceeding the eternal torture of Titans and Gods.
His shapeshifting into other elements that could potentially make him intangible simply means that he couldn’t attack Heracles, and Wukong has never definitively kept up transformations in fights with characters stronger than he is. Wukong’s main strategies in fights such as those are to rely on his immortality, and his trickery, both of which are relatively fickle in this fight. When Wukong’s immortality was at risk, he relied on his trickery (such as in the case with Laozi), and when his trickery was saw through, he relied on his immortality to keep him alive. Heracles can and will exploit both in a possible fight with a character like Wukong.
Wukong can also transfigure other beings into other things, but since Wukong has never used this in a fight with characters stronger than him, it is tentative at best, with it also being true that since Wukong can use his own powers while transformed, Heracles could potentially too. The Greek Gods, also having a history of transmuting mortals, have never been capable of transmuting other immortals, meaning that immortals likely have some sort of resistance to transmutation, and Heracles is functionally immortal and has an immortal core. This tentative fact should be able to counteract the tentative idea of Wukong being able to transmute Heracles into something else, even if the possibility is small.
Conclusion
Killing Sun Wukong is no simple task. He has achieved immortality multiple times. He has a bucket load of broken abilities and feats. However, he is fighting someone who is several times stronger and faster than him, someone who has earned their place among the Gods themselves, someone who can destroy his entire body fairly quickly several times over as well as fast and intelligent enough to counter his every move. This accumulated with the fact that Wukong’s hax is mostly useless with regard to the stat difference, makes this easier for Heracles than Wukong. Wukong in this fight is fighting the God of Strength, and although killing the Monkey King may be a herculean task - if anyone were to be up to it, it would be the very man the word is named after.
Team Sun Wukong
Stats
The contest of stats between the God of Strength and the Monkey King is without a doubt very complex, given the broad worlds they journey through and the variety of foes they face. However, Sun Wukong should have the tools to at least keep up or challenge Heracles in this Death Battle.
A notable point for Team Heracles is the item of scaling to Zeus himself, which would give Heracles a massive boost in power and ability, as well as Apollo. While the case for it certainly exists, it is debatable whether Heracles should scale all the way to Zeus. For one thing, Heracles never truly defeated Zeus in combat, with the same being able to be said for Apollo due to Zeus breaking up their duel. Zeus is consistently superior to many of the entities that Heracles has battled, and it is hard to say if lodging an arrow into Hades should be grounds for it either. While the two do share rank, Zeus and Hades never did combat or demonstrated that Hades would be on the same level of power. As a result, while it is possible that Heracles could scale to the top tiers of Greek mythology, it is ultimately questionable enough to enable Sun to keep up. Wukong should be solidly above the universal range in power via his size feat. This is notable in that it requires no scaling, making it overall more reliable and enabling Wukong to dwarf Heracles should the God’s scaling chain fall through.
Speed follows a very similar routine as attack power. Armed with scaling and possible size differences in the cosmologies, Heracles could very well gain the lead over Sun in agility. Once again Zeus is the main source of speed advantage, though Athena and Ares also serve as sources. Unlike with Zeus, Team Wukong yields the point on Ares, as Heracles very much gave him a thrashing in their duel. However, it is questionable if it should automatically put Heracles above Wukong. The source of Ares flying through the spheres unfortunately does not give a time period on how long this flight takes, and also implies that Ares might have been doing so in his chariot. As a result it is hard to place a full number on the feat, and is also put into question if Heracles should scale to the chariot, as the stabbing was after Ares leaped out of it and said chariot was used for a successful retreat. Once again Wukong takes the field in direct feats, as his staff feat and universe cross should safely outdo anything Heracles has done on his own.
Overall, there is no doubt that strong cases can be made for either side in stats, but Heracles must rely much more on scaling and comparisons to get an edge over the Monkey King. Wukong’s direct feats trump Heracles’ effectively, and should enable him to keep up with scaling Heracles could potentially receive, if not dominate in the event high tier scaling is rejected.
Abilities and Immortality
Sun Wukong without a doubt has a vastly higher amount of moves and techniques to call upon within this battle. Heracles mainly relies on super strength and archery, while Sun comes to the field with an enormous arsenal of hax and powers to keep him in the game no matter what the God of Strength throws at him. Sun can dominate the battlefield with a seemingly endless number of clones that Heracles will have to keep up with, generate barriers to keep safe from blows, shapeshift, change his size, and much more. This will make it extremely difficult for Heracles to land critical blows or even hit the real target, as duplicates will constantly be pouring over him and he will still have to deal with shields and Wukong potentially just shrinking before a blow is dealt. The rattles could admittedly be a problem for the clones, but they still fail to stop any of Wukong’s other defenses and Wukong could potentially use his sheer numbers to get around them. Hydra poison is also going to be a significant threat to Sun, but still one he can likely deal with. Shields would enable arrows to be blocked, a duplicate could take the blow for Sun, or they could be deflected with the staff. Overall, Sun just has numerous layers of defensive powers he can constantly use to change up his protection to make it where Heracles is never able to stop the monkey the same way as before.
On the flip side of defense, Sun also is able to use many of his powers for the offensive. His shapeshifting and summons will enable him to take on whatever form he wishes against Heracles and drive the numbers advantage even higher, and these forms can also come with unique ways to take the warrior down. For example, he could put Heracles to sleep as an insect. He could freeze Heracles in place, consistently control the field with spatial manipulation, hit Heracles with transmutation or change his size, or get the jump on his enemy with invisibility. With such a wide variety of tools and tactics to do battle with compared to Heracles, Sun will have numerous ways to answer his opponent’s powers and create situations favorable for himself whenever he pleases, and use his own powers to escape from a dangerous situation. Talking about escape, Wukong can totally just flee whenever he wants to - he can travel to Heaven or the Underworld, use spatial manipulation to leave the field in an instant, or turn into ether. His clones/summons could continue the fight in his absence.
Taking a more particular look at the pilgrim’s hair clones, the size advantage he could potentially conjure up is immense. He can chew up his hairs and use each individual bit as its own clone, summoning thousands at once. On top of that, the clones can clone themselves, eventually multiplying into millions and billions of new Wukongs. The sheer amount of duplicates Heracles will be facing needs to be emphasized. It can be hard to get a sense of scale, so here’s a site that shows what one million dots looks like in a row - you need to scroll for a while to see the whole thing. Imagine Heracles is a single pixel. All of those pixels are Wukongs he’ll need to deal with.
A billion might seem in your head like a small leap above that, but it isn’t. Here’s another graphic that displays what a billion looks like compared to a million - the gray part is one million, the entire thing adds up to one billion. Each cell here is 100,000 Wukongs. Heracles wouldn’t be one of these cells, he’d be one 1/100,000 of one. And this is only one billion. Not even plural. While the clones may not be for sure as powerful as Wukong is, he still has enough trust in them to bring them out while fighting entities on a similar level to him, such as Prince Nezha and heaven’s armies. Not to mention they can use Wukong’s individual powers as well. All it takes is for one Wukong to successfully flee the scene by traveling to a different dimension, going invisible, turning into ether, turning into an unsuspecting gnat and hauling ass, etcetera, and the multiplication could start all over again.
One of the main arguments against Wukong’s clone advantage is that Heracles could disorient them with his castanets that he used against the Stymphalian birds. It’s doubtful that, with the massive scale we’re talking about here, he’d be able to affect every last clone at once. The birds were spread out over one lake under a mountain, meanwhile one billion or several billion Wukongs would take up a much larger area. For the argument about chasing the Elaphos Kerynitis for a year, it could be argued he didn’t literally spend a year running after it. The account of the tale in Apollodorus’ Library specifically says he spent a year hunting it. It doesn’t really imply constant movement. “Hunting” could include time spent tracking it down in the first place, time spent preparing, hell it never even specifies that he didn’t take breaks to sleep or eat during that time. On the other hand, Wukong has said he could go without sleep for a thousand nights and not feel fatigued.
Another critical threat to Heracles is Sun Wukong’s immortality. Sun has numerous different forms of this, such as regeneration, safety from fatal blows, and a huge stash of extra lives he can utilize in the event one of his lives truly is slain. Heracles has dealt with regeneration before, but his answer to the Lernean Hydra will not be quite as effective against the Monkey King. Like the Hydra, cutting up Wukong will just result in more Wukongs. But using fire to cauterize the wounds will simply not work thanks to Wukong’s resistances, assuming Wukong doesn’t just take control of it and counter.
The existence of a “single solid mass” in his stomach that can be removed from Wukong to cancel his immortality is also mostly hypothetical. Other translations don’t have any mention of this supposed immortality lump, and Wukong being made more durable by the furnace Laozi put him in to try and remove him from the elixir is mentioned several times throughout the novel. This increase in his durability is confirmed several times both by Monkey himself and narration. It’s likely if the “single solid mass” is in fact the correct interpretation of the scene with Laozi, these other scenes can be used to extrapolate that the mass was just digested and infused into his body by time and the furnace - certain things point towards this interpretation, though nothing solidly confirms it. Even in the translation that includes it, the mass is really only mentioned once, anyways, and only covers a few forms of his immortality - notably, not his 72 lives given to him by his 72 transformations.
While the Hydra’s poison could certainly create problems, Wukong’s pain resistance (which lets him laugh off even fatal wounds) and insane regeneration could potentially let him recover, assuming he even gets hit despite his duplicates and repelling barriers. And this is all without addressing the possible immortality granted from erasing himself from death. Should it be applicable, it becomes debatable if Heracles has a means to truly put Wukong down for good, and even without he will have to endure a gauntlet where very few of his tools will be effective in working. On the other side of the coin, the Greek hero does have a mortal form which can be (and was) killed. It’s likely that going by Death Battle rules, killing this mortal form would count as a win for Wukong, even if Herc would just ascend to godhood after.
Experience and Intelligence
The experience and skills of these two warriors is immense and incredible, and both have battled incredible odds and forces to reach the endings they received. However, Sun Wukong likely takes the edge in several key areas. Heracles is undeniably an incredibly intelligent and skilled fighter, but it is very likely that his foe is craftier and also smarter. Wukong’s cunning has been of aid throughout his adventures, and given the number of lives and defenses he has, he will likely be able to use them to turn the tables on his opponent. Sun will probably be swift to catch onto many of the Greek God’s best tools going into this battle, and could prioritize removing them from the equation.
Tools like the lion pelt, golden sword, and rattles could possibly be swiped by the monkey or any one of his few billion duplicates, taking away some of the main threats Wukong is up against and creating new openings to utilize. This also creates the potential killing blow with Hydra poison, as Wukong could very well realize the sheer might it holds and use it against Heracles, just like how the Greek God met his mortal fate. While Heracles does have ways to counter some of Wukong’s powers, Sun’s cunning and swift strategizing will likely enable him to shut down several of these and come up with ways to take down the God of Strength. Similarly, Sun Wukong has battled enemies similar to Heracles and his raw power before, making it where it is unlikely for many of his opponent’s tricks and tactics to completely take him off guard. Simply put, Sun’s experience and cunning makes it where he can counter or outright utilize Heracles’ advantages for himself, and he will overall be prepared for pretty much anything the Greek hero can throw at him.
Conclusion
Heracles and Sun Wukong are both masters of combat, champions of their worlds, and incredible warriors. A solid case for winning can be made for either side, but Team Wukong overall feels that the Monkey King has the advantage in this duel. Heracles has many powerful feats and scalings, but Wukong’s safer direct feats enable him to keep up or exceed Heracles depending on where he is placed. Wukong’s versatility and enormous move-pool is leagues larger and more diverse than the one Heracles is bringing into this fight, and he has counters for several of the god’s winning moves. With his crafty intellect, impressive experience, useful feats, and enormous range of powers and tricks, Sun Wukong could very well be the one to strike down the God of Strength once and for all and send him to Olympus.
Final Tally
Team Heracles - 7
tmk
therealcalhoward
SneedFormerlyChuck
76SUP
Trashy
Robin
VampyreNVRmore
Verdict Written By:
tmk
SneedFormerlyChuck
Team Sun Wukong - 6
MKF4
Swiftwind
AgentRedHead
Mal
Clockboxxer
Shadow
Verdict Written By:
MKF4
76SUP
