The Kwizatz Hadderach, Duke of Arrakis, Muad’dib to the masses and Usil to his inner circle, possessing power and abilities on par with a Jedi Master.
Ozymandias…aka Adrian Veidt…worlds smartest and richest man, member of the Watchmen, capable of knocking around teammates, each of which have hand-to-hand combat skills on par with Batman.
Who would win?
THE SPICE MUST FLOW!
Paul wins by seeing the battle prior to it happening, and avoiding it.
Maybe by wandering off into in the desert, but he avoids it.
I agree. Not even close.
If they were both thrown together absolutely without warning (sucked through dimensional portals and dropped together), I suspect they’d be pretty well matched hand-to-hand. It’s where the calculation/prediction/prescience comes in that things get messy, because they both have their own versions of it.
(It’s my WAG that while Adrian Veidt would not have thought much of Paul Atreides, he would by contrast have *massively *approved of Leto II Atreides, the God Emperor, and his acceptance of the Golden Path.)
IMO Many of the combat trained mentats in the Dune Universe show abilities to match Ozymandias. Add in Paul’s prescience and it’s no contest.
Ah, but Ozy’s tachyon generator can cloud Paul’s precog, just like he did to Doc Manhattan.
Anyway, here’s a spirited parallel discussion over at CBR.
Veidt has no experience fighting someone using a personal shield and wouldn’t be able to land a blow on Paul before Paul could.
I prefer the “Paul knows the fight will happen and convinces Adrian not to fight” approach, though.
Interesting discussion.
There’s also the evolutionary aspect. With 10,000 or more years of evolution in an environment heavily impacted by hand-to-hand combat, there’s no accounting for how much improvement in reflexes people in Paul’s era might have. Muad’dib in a landslide.
