Wolverine vs The Thing: Why Logan's Claws and Healing Factor Win a Brutal, Close Fight

Wolverine wins this fight, but it is not fast and it is not clean. The Thing makes it genuinely hard, yet in the end only one of these two can actually finish the other.

These are two of Marvel's most indestructible guys. One has an unbreakable skeleton and claws that cut through basically anything. The other is made of solid orange rock and hits hard enough to trade blows with the Hulk. On paper, it looks like a really fun fight. The best part is that we don't have to speculate about how it goes, because it has already happened in the comics, and what went down tells us everything we need to know.

Wolverine is surprisingly strong and surprisingly fast

James Logan Howlett is Wolverine, a mutant and one of the most important members of the X-Men. Born in the 1800s with a remarkable healing factor, Logan has lived a lot of life as a soldier, a samurai, an outlaw and a living weapon. Now Wolverine is at his best as a hero, working with both the X-Men and the Avengers to protect humanity and mutant kind from all sorts of threats.

Among his mutant powers are superhuman abilities like super strength and speed, and in a lot of ways he is comparable to Captain America, the original super soldier. Logan has overpowered and thrown around Spider-Man and Sabretooth, and he has literally thrown around Colossus before. He can easily tear through metal and snap steel chains, routinely picks up hundreds of pounds or even a few tons with relative ease, and has no problem throwing superhumans around with his punches, up to and including Vision and Namor. Wolverine is surprisingly strong.

He is also surprisingly fast. He can move faster than his opponents can even keep up with, and that includes other superhumans. Spider-Man, who is maybe the fastest and most agile street level character in Marvel, is routinely surprised and caught off guard by Wolverine's speed and reflexes. Logan can routinely dodge or block bullets or laser blasts headed his way, even after the bullet has been fired or at point blank range.

To be fair, Wolverine doesn't always use that kind of speed in fights. He can when he needs to, but he very rarely needs to dodge, because he knows he can simply take the attack and heal from it. Sometimes he likes to take a few hits at the start of a fight to get the blood flowing and get amped up. Other times he will simply press the attack, go all offense, and not worry about defense at all.

Logan's adamantium and healing factor make him nearly impossible to put down

That leads into Wolverine's greatest power: his healing factor and durability. His skeleton is covered entirely in adamantium, which means he literally cannot be cut or torn apart. "And trust me, plenty of people have tried." The metal also greatly increases his durability. Wolverine has been kicked clean around the world and been just fine. He has taken punches and attacks from some of the strongest beings on Earth, from the Hulk to Thor and plenty more, and walked away.

Bullets don't even faze him. He can keep fighting while stabbed up or turned into a pincushion, and he has kept on fighting after having his heart destroyed on multiple occasions. He can heal and come back from literal disintegration, and he has even survived nuclear bombs several times over. He might be injured, but Logan is always going to heal, and he is always going to come back, no matter what.

Wolverine is one of the most skilled fighters in the Marvel universe

It is not just that Wolverine is a raging brute who relies solely on his healing factor, although he definitely does act like that from time to time. He is actually one of the most skilled fighters and best warriors in the whole Marvel universe. His adamantium claws shred through anything in their path, and they can pierce Hulk, Thor, Thanos and Gladiator. Less durable opponents, he can slice into little pieces in an instant.

He is said to be an extremely deadly fighter, renowned across the universe for his skill. He is skilled enough to casually defeat master martial artists and to hold his own against, or even beat, Captain America, Black Panther, Iron Fist and Shang-Chi, literally some of the best fighters in Marvel. He only gets more dangerous in his berserker rage, where he goes hyper violent and becomes even more powerful, instantly overwhelming most any opponent. It is like compressing days of nonstop fighting into a few minutes or seconds. In short, Wolverine is the best at what he does, and what he does isn't pretty.

Ben Grimm's strength has grown since his early 80 tons

Ben Grimm, the ever loving blue eyed Thing, is one of Marvel's oldest, toughest and most underrated powerhouses. Before he was covered in orange rock, Ben was an astronaut and Air Force test pilot, a man of action. His life changed forever when his best friend Reed Richards asked him to help pilot an experimental rocket, and Ben, Reed, Sue Storm and Johnny Storm were bombarded by cosmic rays. Back on Earth, Ben found himself transformed into a walking mountain of stone: stronger than steel, tougher than concrete, but with the same big heart underneath. That is how the Fantastic Four, Marvel's first family, was born.

The Thing's strength is no joke. Early on he could press around 80 tons, but his strength has only grown thanks to intense training and further doses of cosmic radiation. He has held up multistory buildings weighing tens of thousands of tons, lifted an entire oil rig out of the ocean, shattered Quasar's energy constructs and even broken through adamantium chains. He once overpowered a press designed to punch through an entire planet.

Underwater, Ben has matched Namor blow for blow, even gaining the upper hand, and the Silver Surfer himself admitted he needed to boost his power just to get the edge over him. Then there is his never ending rivalry with the Hulk. The Hulk is stronger overall, but Ben has knocked out the Immortal Hulk, drawn blood from Savage Hulk, and forced Green Scar Hulk, one of the angriest Hulks of all, to take him seriously. He may not always win, but he always stands tall.

The Thing's real power is a spirit that refuses to break

Physically, the Thing is one of the most durable heroes in Marvel. His rocky hide is like a tank, shrugging off bazooka fire, high caliber rounds, massive explosions and even a planet cracking blast from Galactus himself. Extreme heat, cold and pressure don't faze him. Very few things can even pierce his body. Wolverine's adamantium claws can, for example, but that is one of the only exceptions.

The truth, though, is that the Thing's greatest power isn't his strength or his durability, it is his spirit. His willpower is legendary. When he fought the Champion of the Universe, it was like every bone in his body got broken. He was battered, bleeding and crushed, but he kept standing back up. He refused to quit, and the Champion finally surrendered, not because he couldn't win, but because he realised he could never break Ben Grimm's spirit. The Thing might not always get the spotlight, but he deserves to. He proves time and again that when the chips are down, it's always clobberin' time.

On paper, strength is Wolverine's weakness and healing is the Thing's

Wolverine was born in the 1800s, fought in actual wars for over a century, then went through the Weapon X program, which laced his entire skeleton with adamantium, the strongest metal in Marvel. His claws are made of that same material and have cut through virtually everything they have ever been put against. He is significantly faster than Ben, not just in running but in combat speed, the speed at which he processes and responds to a fight. With 150 years of real combat experience, he is one of the best fighters in the entire Marvel universe.

Then there is the healing factor. He has come back from being burned down to a skeleton, healed from being ripped in half and regenerated from near atomic destruction. Basically, the only way to end Logan is complete molecular disintegration. His one weakness here is strength. His official strength is somewhere between 800 pounds and tons, which sounds almost embarrassing next to what the Thing brings. As the comics show, it doesn't really matter.

Ben, meanwhile, has held back a giant alien spacecraft trying to take off, stopped a 30,000 ton building from falling over with his bare hands, and held a suspension bridge together, around 10,000 tons, while people evacuated. He overpowered a pile driver stated to be powerful enough to push through a planet. His official strength is 100 tons, but Mr. Fantastic himself has said Ben has a mental block stopping him from tapping his full strength, and at his best he trades blows with the Hulk regularly. The crucial point is that he doesn't heal. His rock skin grows back over time, but there is no healing factor and no regeneration. What you do to him, he carries.

Fantastic Four #374 already showed Wolverine's claws cutting through the Thing

This is where the fight becomes canon. In Fantastic Four issue 374, Johnny Storm accidentally burned down part of Empire State University while fighting Skrulls and went on the run from the law. Spider-Man got Doctor Strange to put together a team of Wolverine, Hulk and Ghost Rider to bring Johnny in peacefully before someone else hurt him. These Secret Defenders found the Fantastic Four instead, and a massive brawl broke out.

Sue Richards had recently absorbed her evil doppelganger from the Infinity War crossover, which made her edgier and more aggressive than normal, and she attacked Wolverine harder than she normally would. That sent Logan into a berserker frenzy and he tried to attack Sue. The Thing stepped in to pull Wolverine off her, and in the struggle the feral Wolverine slashed Ben's face, cutting straight through his armored rock skin. Seriously cut, the Thing struck back as hard as he could, sending Logan flying through buildings.

The injury was devastating for Ben physically and emotionally, for a guy who already hated how he looked. He wore a helmet to cover and protect his scarred face for 34 issues, and it took almost three years for the injury to heal. The fight itself ended inconclusively, because the Fantastic Four got whisked away before any winner was declared. Still, the issue tells us three things.

Three lessons from that clash all point toward Logan

First, Wolverine's claws go straight through the Thing's skin. That was not a clean, deliberate attack. Logan was in a berserker rage, the Thing grabbed him, and the claws found his face in the struggle. One accidental slash in a chaotic situation disfigured Ben badly enough that he wore a helmet for three years of comics. In a real fight, with Logan actively going after him, those claws are finding every gap, every joint and every vulnerable spot in that rock exterior, and none of it grows back fast enough to matter during the fight.

Second, the Thing can absolutely hurt Wolverine. That punch sent Logan through a wall. Ben hits at 100 plus tons, and even with an adamantium skeleton absorbing the damage, your organs still feel that kind of force. Wolverine went through a wall, and he went down.

Third, and most important, Wolverine got back up. He always gets back up. That is the whole thing about Logan: "the knockout is never the end, it's just a pause." Ben can put him through a wall, and Logan heals and comes right back, every single time. The problem for the Thing is that he has no follow up to the knockout. He can hit Wolverine harder than almost anyone, but finishing Wolverine requires damage that accumulates permanently, and the healing factor means that never happens. Meanwhile, every time Logan gets close enough, the Thing takes damage that stays, in the face, the joints and the gaps where the rock is thinner. In a fight where Logan is actually trying, Ben is in serious trouble every time they are within arm's reach.

Wolverine wins because the Thing has no way to finish him

Here is how it actually plays out. The Thing makes this hard, genuinely hard. He is not dumb, and he has been in more fights than almost anyone. He uses his size and power to try to control the fight, keep Logan from getting inside, and smother him with that 100 ton striking force. There are moments where it looks like the Thing might beat Wolverine down enough times that even the healing factor can't keep up.

Ultimately, though, the Thing just cannot finish Wolverine. Every time Ben puts Logan down, Logan gets back up with the claws ready. Every time Logan gets inside, Ben takes permanent damage. The math only goes one way: the rock skin can't keep the claws out, and the Thing's fist can't keep Wolverine down for good. At some point, the damage on Ben's side reaches a level where his body just can't push through anymore.

Wolverine wins. "Not fast, not clean. Ben makes him bleed for every second of it." Logan's whole thing is that he doesn't stop, and against an opponent with no way to heal, that is really all it takes. "It's not about who hits harder, it's about who can actually end it." Only one of them can.

Do you agree that the healing factor decides it, or could the Thing's 100 ton punches keep Logan down long enough to win?