The connecting record
shownDragon Ball (manga) · ch. 193
Son Goku beat Piccolo in Dragon Ball (manga).
The 23rd World Tournament final, won by ring-out after a flying headbutt to the gut knocked Piccolo out of the ring.
What each of them is ranked on
The winner · 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
Beaten · 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
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.