@Chezzy SSJ4 I’m gonna go with Gaara because it’s insinuated that gaara would’ve beat deidara if he wasn’t protecting the village. Plus gaara’s sand counters a lot of Sasuke’s abilities. Even with Mangekyo Sharingan and Amaterasu gaara could easily block that. Gaara can also control a massive amount of sand. I think gaara can take it

@Tim Xman Yup, pretty much sums it up.

Yeah the fact that gaara could counter a stronger ms Sasuke with susano and Amaterasu so effectively means he should be stronger than a weaker version of Sasuke.

CM2 Sasuke>Base Sasuke~Deidara~Gaara

When considering counters and fighting styles, I'd still give Sasuke the edge:

Chidori can pierce right through Gaara's sand, as seen even in the chunin exams, when Gaara was stronger than Sasuke.

Gaara has trouble fighting fast opponents, even though he has range advantage it shouldn't be hard for Sasuke to get close.

Sasuke has more knowledge of Gaara's abilities than Gaara has of Sasuke's abilities, even if he's at a disadvantage Sasuke can use Kirin.

Tbf I'm sure there's good arguments for Gaara winning but I can't think of any

@EmilioRory10 Sasuke just so happen to have very good counters for deidara with his lightning style able to disable earth style explosives and the sharingan being able to see hidden landmines, bombs and the blast radius. And tbh Sasuke had a bit of plot armor during that fight it’s hard to say if CM2 Sasuke is truly above Deidara if he is the gap is small. But Deidara was holding back against Gaara to capture him and not kill him and gaara was holding back to protect the village. Depending on location Gaara can shield himself even against Kirin

The thing is that Base Sasuke was considered fast by Deidara and almost hit him, they're definitely relative in speed (with Sasuke likely being faster with chidori but that's besides the point), Curse Mark Sasuke could've killed him multiple times but didn't because he was trying to find information about Itachi.

^Gaara was able to catch up to Deidara too. He cut off his arm. Like I wrote earlier, electricity is a bad conductor of lightning, which is part of most of Hebi Sasuke's moveset, and Gaara is primarly a long range fighter that has many large scale attacks that can trip Sasuke up. Sure Sasuke has Fire Style, but Gaara has already proved he can block Amaterasu, which is the pinnacle of Fire Release. He can make more sand just by simply breaking down minerals with the sand he already has. Sasuke also doesn't have a lot of attacks that can penetrate Gaara's sand barriers either, and since Gaara is well aware of the power of Chidori, he'll be ready to block it and will be able to trap Sasuke in his sand like he did in the Chunin Exams. Plus Gaara already proved himself in Part 1 to be able to handle strong Curse Mark users like Kimimaro, and that was before he became a Kage. He should be well equipped to deal with Sasuke's curse mark, and it'll be easier to crush his body as well too since he can't enhance the density of his bones like Kimimaro can.

That's fair but the curse mark buff is massive, in speed even Base Sasuke should be relative to Gaara as they both scale to Deidara.

I think the main reason it's hard to properly compare them is that Deidara had 2 real fights and in both of them neither party was capable of fighting at full power

@EmilioRory10 For the most part Sasuke was since he had type advantage, but Gaara not really since he had to protect the village at the same time. In Sasuke's case it was just him and Deidara, even though Tobi interfered Sasuke still had type adavantage, so it didn't really matter if he placed the bomb underground or not.

He really wasn't fighting at full power as he could've killed Deidara but didn't so he could get information about Itachi, as I mentioned before