In honor of the big guy getting a minty fresh new release, I'm considering the US Marvel comics to go against the Japanese Headmasters cartoon. "Rebirth" was just dumb and inaccurate in portraying Headmasters. The G2 comics are also included, even though with Regeneration they're discounted. But we don't know yet where Spike and Max end up in RGen so we can't really count that.
So, who wins a fight between the city bot and his smaller comics version, if they were equal size? For the sake of this contest, let's make cartoon Max smaller.
In the comics, Maximus seemed to function well when combined, except maybe when their personalities clashed. In Headmasters, Maximus was not much without Fortress controlling him (though IIRC that never happened). Comics Maximus was a bit more emotional, but he was a fierce fighter after joining with Spike, and cartoon Max just laid the smack down, but rather unceremoniously. Fortress had the personality when he wasn't combined with the Maximus body. Which one can take more hits? Is Spike smarter than Fortress? Their physical abilities are pretty much equal, so the difference would be how the head modules react to each action.
So who wins a friendly but fierce contest? The object is not to cripple or kill each other, but to put the other into a position where tactically he has nowhere to go, so if he were to continue, he would suffer serious damage.
