Cited Feats

One cited fightDragon Ball Super (manga) · ch. 87
Does this result move the ranking?

Confirms the ladder

The higher-ranked entity beat the lower-ranked one. Record and ladder agree.

Black Frieza vs Son Goku

The winnerBlack FriezaDragon Ball · rank 2
3 places
BeatenSon GokuDragon Ball · rank 5

An outcome the ladder can take at face value, and it runs the way the placings already run. Nothing in it leans on a version, a guidebook or a chain of comparisons: both sides arrive in the strongest state either has shown, and the contest is over in one exchange. What it cannot supply is a size for the gap. A knockout that fast proves there is a distance between them and says nothing about how much, so the record fixes the order and leaves the spacing to argument.

The connecting record

shownDragon Ball Super (manga) · ch. 87

Black Frieza beat Son Goku in Dragon Ball Super (manga).

Knocked out in the same exchange as Vegeta, while in true ultra instinct.

What each of them is ranked on

The winner · Black Frieza · rank 2

manga

Mangacomiccontested

One punch each. He arrives at the end of the Granolah arc and drops the two strongest Saiyans alive — one in the perfected instinctive state, the other in the form built from pride — with a single strike apiece, and the arc ends with him unopposed. It is the least ambiguous top-tier feat in the franchise: no chain of comparisons, no narration doing the lifting, one scene with a result. He is marked contested because it exists only in the manga and has never been animated, and because he has not been seen since.

  • shownDragon Ball Super (manga) · Granolah the Survivor arc

    Defeats Goku and Vegeta at their peak forms with one blow each. — 2022

Black Frieza on the Dragon Ball ladder

Beaten · Son Goku · rank 5

manga · anime · films

MangaToei animeCanon filmsGT and the old filmscomicanimationfilm

The longest depicted record anybody here has, and he is fifth because several of the entries above him have scored on him directly. Ultra instinct is the real thing — a state the narration describes as moving without deciding to, and which the panels back up by having him evade things he is not looking at. The screen and the page agree about him more consistently than about anyone else in this franchise.

  • shownDragon Ball Super (manga) · Universe Survival arc

    Fights Jiren in ultra instinct in the tournament's final stage. — 2018

  • shownDragon Ball Z · Frieza Saga

    Defeats Frieza on Namek as a Super Saiyan. — 1991

Son Goku on the Dragon Ball ladder

What this does not settle

One fight in one work. It is the only result the record gives between these two, and it is evidence about that meeting and nothing wider — not a general matchup, not a rematch, and not a ranking of its own.

The ladder above it is argued from everything either of them has been shown doing; this page is argued from one citation.

Where the two disagree, the disagreement is the point, and it stays visible rather than being resolved by whichever of them happens to be on this page.

Data: CC BY 4.0. Reuse with credit to citedfeats.com.