Saitama vs. Popeye: Who Would Win?

Comparing the overpowered Saitama, the protagonist of One-Punch Man, with other characters is always fun. Whether it’s a comparison from his own universe, like the ones we’ve done (Blast, Boros, Garou, God), or some other fictional universe (like the ones with Superman, Gojo, or Goku), it’s always fun to see how Saitama would do against some other characters.

In this article, we are going to compare Saitama to the famous sailor Popeye, to determine who would win in a fight between the two.

Saitama would undoubtedly defeat Popeye, even without the full use of his powers and abilities. Popeye is strong in human terms and a bit stronger than that when he eats spinach, but Saitama is an actual superhero and, on top of that, he is overpowered in every way. We don’t think that Saitama would even have to resort to his actual powers to defeat Popeye, even if the latter were to consume spinach.

Now that you have the short version of the answer, the rest of the article is going to be divided into three sections, with the first two introducing the characters, their powers, and their abilities. In the end, we’re going to give our final verdict and explanation on why Saitama would ultimately be able to defeat Popeye in a direct fight.

Saitama and his powers

Saitama is the main character of the One-Punch Man series, nicknamed One-Punch Man. He is the strongest character in the series. Saitama is facing an existential crisis as he is now too powerful to get any thrill from the battle.

Saitama holds the title of One-Punch Man, referring to him as the strongest, fastest, and most resilient hero of the series. Not a single enemy has yet been found that can even slightly hurt Saitama, and almost no enemy has been able to survive even one of his serious blows. Some enemies survived his punches, such as the multiple people he hit (against whom he holds back) and Boros, whom Saitama sympathized with and held back to give Boros a satisfying and stimulating fight.

Saitama’s only strength lies in the fact that his body goes far beyond the limits of human capabilities, which allows him to achieve amazing results. He is so strong that in terms of abilities he even outshines artificial creatures created or bred specifically for fights with rather strong opponents, such as mechanical creatures or mutants from the Evolution Chamber.

Since none of the enemies have presented a real problem for Saitama so far, his power limit is much higher than what has been shown so far. Although his abilities are limited only by the transcendental development of the resources of the human body (he cannot fly, shoot fireballs, etc.), his superhuman physical characteristics more than compensate for the lack of diversity in his powers.

The origin of Saitama’s immense power is mysterious and unclear. Although he tells everyone that he got his incredible strength simply through physical training, no one believes him. According to Saitama, after a year and a half of doing 100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, and 100 crunches every day, as well as running 10 km every day, he reached a certain level of superhuman strength. This training was so intense for Saitama that at times he felt like he could die, and stated that it was because of this that all of his hair suddenly fell out.

Genos believes that Saitama himself doesn’t really know or understand how he gained his power and hopes to learn the secret by sparring with him and watching him, while Dr. Genus believes that Saitama trained so hard with a set training regime that broke his Limiter. It should be noted that Saitama completed all parts of the training one after the other without interruption, and he also battled the monsters that appeared daily, which made his training more difficult than one might expect.

Despite his incredible physical attributes, Saitama can be surpassed by ordinary people with skills in non-combat areas, such as when he was defeated by Bang in the game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, or when he was defeated by King in video games, mostly in one-sided matches. In addition, he also seems to have a normal human appetite, as he lost to Genos in a spicy noodle eating competition and later showed the same problems in a spicy noodle eating test against the clock.

Popeye and his powers

Popeye is a fictional character created by American Elzie Crisler Segar in 1929 for her comic strip The Thimble Theatre. A crude and sensitive but generous and loyal sailor, endowed with extraordinary strength, he became one of the emblematic characters of American popular culture following the cartoon adaptations from 1933.

Popeye is a gruff, touchy sailor who reacts violently if provoked, displaying his strength and physical resistance that borders on invulnerability. Uneducated, he is punctuated with flashes of lucidity but does not generally shine with his intelligence, as shown by his very particular language. In fact, he confuses people and verb tenses, makes numerous errors of vocabulary and syntax, and prefers definitive sentences to great explanations.

However, Popeye is also brave, loyal, close to the poor, even sentimental about Olive Oyl. Although he is dressed as a sailor, and this is his job when he first appears, Popeye quickly becomes an all-purpose adventurous hero, going from boxer to farmer, from journalist to enlightened dictator. In the comics, his spinach consumption is episodic, with Popeye being naturally strong. The spinach was more pronounced in the animated series.

Saitama vs. Popeye: Who wins?

This one was fairly easy to compare, really, as it was a complete mismatch. Popeye might be strong enough to kick ass in his own universe and he certainly has fought his fair share of monsters (and dinosaurs) in the animated series while on spinach, but he cannot really compare to Saitama in any way.

Popeye is not a superhero. He is a sailor who can kick ass, and kick some more ass while on spinach. Other than that, he is pretty much your regular Joe. Saitama, on the other hand, is… well… Saitama. Overpowered and a genuine superhero, the bald guy is so many levels above Popeye that the latter seems almost insignificant in comparison.

In our opinion, this fight would end very quickly as Saitama would easily deal away with Popeye.