The connecting record
shownNaruto · ch. 137–138
Naruto Uzumaki beat Gaara in Naruto.
Both fall from the sky exhausted; Gaara cannot get up and asks Naruto to stay away.
What each of them is ranked on
The winner · Naruto Uzumaki · rank 5
The Seventh Hokage — shippuden
Inside Baryon Mode he outfights the strongest thing the sequel has produced, and the argument for fifth rather than first is what that costs: the form burns his own life to run, expires on a clock, and leaves somebody else to strike last. He also spent the entire series formally ranked genin — the lowest grade the system issues — and then became Hokage, the top of the same ladder, without passing the examination in between.
shownBoruto: Naruto Next Generations · Isshiki arc
Enters Baryon Mode and outfights Isshiki at the cost of his own lifespan. — 2021
statedNaruto · Konoha Crush arc
His promotion ceremony is interrupted and never rescheduled. — 2002
shownNaruto · Kaguya arc
Fights Kaguya alongside Sasuke in Six Paths Sage Mode. — 2014
Beaten · Gaara · rank 15
The Fifth Kazekage — classic
Made Kage of his village at an age when the protagonist is still failing to be promoted out of the bottom grade, which is the rank system producing two opposite verdicts on people of the same age in the same year. His sand defends without instruction from him, and by the war he is moving enough of it to shield an army rather than a person.
shownNaruto · Chunin Exam arc
His sand intercepts attacks automatically, without conscious effort. — 2001
shownNaruto · Fourth Shinobi World War arc
Commands and shields allied divisions with large-scale sand. — 2013
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.