Board Thread:Theories and Speculation/@comment-25043344-20150712073834/@comment-734582-20150716152211

GreatestSin wrote: if he stayed in his own fighting style he would have won, we saw this already in the manga where sasukes 9-bijuu-susanoo overhelmed naruto+clones like nothing. With this i understand what you're getting at. But it's simply not true. Maybe my point of view is very different, i don't know.

To put it in simple terms, power is a flow of water. Naruto has an enormous flow of water (a lot of power) while Sasuke has a smaller flow. Sasuke absorbs Biju power and temporarily, his flow is as great/greater than Naruto's. In the end, we put all this water in two buckets and notice they're at the same level (It's a tie). Even though sasuke temporarily overpowers Naruto (greater flow), he doesn't win. So if we subtract the Biju's power from this equation, Sasuke < Naruto.

Alternatively, you can see it as a candle. When Sasuke absorbs the Biju his power is greater and his candle burns brighter, but the end condition (it's a tie) forces the conclusion that in the end, their candles are equally burned up. Hence, without the temporary increase in power, Sasuke would not beat Naruto.

I can keep conjuring analogies and graphs and equations but in the end, what kills any other theory is that the end result is a tie, and so any intermediate boosts are essential for that tie. Without these boosts, it simply would not be a tie. Even with Sasuke's strongest attack (Indra's arrow) and a massive amount of chakra he could not defeat naruto.