The connecting record
shownDragon Ball (manga) · ch. 402
Cell beat Son Goku in Dragon Ball (manga).
A surrender: Goku concedes the Cell Games bout, under rules Cell had just reduced to giving up or dying.
What each of them is ranked on
The winner · Cell · rank 11
Perfect form — anime · manga
The most instructive absence on the page. He is the apex threat of an entire era and there is no well-attested official figure for him anywhere — the numbering had already been dropped by the time he arrived, so the franchise's central villain of the period was never priced at all. What he does is shown clearly enough: he holds the field against everyone present until a boy who had not been the protagonist takes it off him.
shownDragon Ball Z · Cell Games Saga
Defeated by Gohan after overwhelming the assembled fighters. — 1993
Beaten · Son Goku · rank 5
manga · anime · films
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
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.