Every recorded result
shownDragon Ball (manga) · ch. 364Upset
Piccolo beat Cell in Dragon Ball (manga).
A retreat: outmatched by a Piccolo newly fused with Kami, the imperfect Cell blinds everyone with a Solar Flare and escapes.
shownDragon Ball (manga) · ch. 370Confirms the ladder
Cell beat Piccolo in Dragon Ball (manga).
Neck broken, blasted through and thrown into the sea. He survives it.
What each of them is ranked on
1 win · 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
1 win · Piccolo · rank 17
Orange — films · manga
Thirty years of being written past, then a film hands him a new form and an actual result. His placement is a version question in the plainest terms: on the strength of the 1990s material he belongs several tiers lower, and on the strength of one 2022 film he does not.
shownDragon Ball Super: Super Hero · 2022
Takes the Orange form and fights Cell Max.
What this does not settle
2 results, each cited, and the tally counts every one of them the same. That is its rough edge: a win at one side's lowest weighs as much as a win at its peak, which is why a level score goes to the latest result rather than to a judgement about which fight mattered. It is a record of meetings, 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 these 2 citations.
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.