Board Thread:Versus Debates/@comment-36006024-20180719181710/@comment-25607614-20180831114140

Kakuzu lost to Naruto because that's how the story goes. All we can do is use the evidence we have to come to conclusions when you guys do these mock battles. The fact is that Kakuzu is from Madara's era and survived longer than he did. He absolutely has a larger timeline of experience than Madara. Madara may have battled more, but it does serve as an empirical piece of evidence refuting the "Experience over strength" argument. We don't know what Madara really knows. We only ever see snippets of combat that he actually did and its only from him and Hashi's viewpoint. All we know is that Kakuzu has led a similar life, and that it didn't keep him alive against a teenaged Naruto and Kakashi (and to a much lesser extent Choji and Ino).

I don't chime in on these to play favorites. I just like to debate, and the analytics that you can use to measure characters keeps you sharp when writing your own stories. Does feel like there is a lot of unsubstantiated Madara hype around these parts though.