Curb Stomp Battle/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Memo to Starfleet Headquarters: Please invent shields at earliest opportunity.
  • Supernatural sees this a lot, usually with the Winchester's getting their asses handed to them by the Big Bad.
    • This happens several times with Alastair and Lilith, who pwn humans and angels alike to begin with, only for Sam to eventually kill them with his brain.
    • Anything attempting to take on an archangel ends up burned to dust with a simple touch, or exploded with a snap of the fingers. Even after Castiel gets brought back 'new and improved', Raphael can still kick his ass all over the shop.
    • Lucifer taking on the pagan gods in the fifth season episode Hammer of the Gods. You would think that the mighty mighty pagan gods might put up a little more of a fight than the humans could, but Lucifer slaughters them all without breaking a sweat. And then kills his brother - the archangel Gabriel - just as easily.
    • Depressingly averted in the Season 5 finale. We never get to see even a hint of the epic, world-ending battle between Michael and Lucifer. This was a win in-universe, though, since the curb-stomping in question would have torched the planet.
    • In the Season 6 finale, the final battle between Castiel and Raphael ends up being like that. Amped up on purgatory souls, Castiel merely snaps his fingers and archangel Raphael explodes into bloody goo. The opening episodes of season 7 show him continuing to level effortless Disproportionate Retribution on angels and humans alike.
  • Merlin against anything short of Big Bad material (unless he has to hide his magic, and even then if he's wielding Excalibur). For a hero he has an utterly enormous body count, and a major Papa Wolf complex.
  • The Unit vs. anybody. The terrorists who hijacked the plane in the pilot episode got it the worst though.
  • A surprising number of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fights, especially in the early years. The reason for Spike's early popularity could legitimately have been driven by the fact that he was the first to actually come close to taking Buffy out in a straight fight (as opposed to the Master's crazy hypnotic mind powers).
    • Reintroduced in grand fashion during the fifth season finale. The Dragon had just finished beating down Spike, throwing him from the top of the tower to prevent him from rescuing Dawn from the impending ritual sacrifice. Minutes later, along comes Buffy. The stage is set for a momentous battle, but before the villain could finish saying, "This should be interesting", Buffy walks right past him and shoves him off the tower without seeming to pay him the slightest bit of attention.
    • On the topic of the fifth season; Buffy and Glory's first battle was this, starting with Glory backhanding Buffy across the room.
    • The battle against Adam is another fine example. Adam seems to have the edge at first, until the Scoobies cast a spell that imbues Buffy with all their powers, turning her into the physical manifestation of The Power of Friendship. Curb stomping ensues.
    • Buffy vs The Judge: The Judge is a legendary demon who was defeated the last time by an entire army - most of whom died in the process. If anybody should be on the receiving end of a Curb Stomp Battle, it's Buffy. Right? Buffy pulls a rocket launcher (stolen from the conveniently easy to break into local Army base), and the "fight" ends before it can even start.
    • Finally, there's that time in "Family", where Buffy finishes a close fight by literally curb-stomping a demon.
    • The Beast from Angel deals with pretty much everyone this way.
    • Hamilton had the same skill. In the finale one of Angel's dumber decisions ever was to try and take him on alone, very shortly after he demonstrated his ability to beat down Illyria. He survived only through Connor intervening and Hamilton falling prey to Explaining Your Power to the Enemy.
  • The Borg from Star Trek. A single cube has, on two occasions, slaughtered fully-staffed and trained Federation fleets. The first time around, they defeated a fleet of forty ships, though admittedly they had the benefit of up-to-date knowledge of Federation technology and tactics. The second time likely would have gone the same way if Picard weren't around to figure out the cube's weak point. Then came Voyager...
    • The entire Federation put years of effort into producing Voyager (it was the top of the line ship of the moment, thus had all the Borg info). Then Voyager gains access to all sorts of Borg secrets and alien technology; including a Borg of their own.
      • At least in regards to newest and greatest Fed tech, so was the Defiant. Even more explicitly in fact, being designed from the ground up to be a warship and more specifically to fight the Borg. She had access to NEWER tech given when Voyager left. And while she acquitted herself well, the Defiant along with an entire fleet of ships fighting long enough for the Ent-E to travel from the Neutral Zone still couldn't beat a single cube. Alien tech might be a more compelling argument if we weren't talking about a peacefully united government composed of 150 separate worlds with an untold number of allied/neutral species to also gather tech from.
    • Just when did these easy defeats of the Borg happen? There were a few Enemy Mine situations, and episodes that were two-parters where the heroes eventually won via Techno Babble as opposed to fighting... this being exactly like TNG. It was Voyager's overuse of the Borg that made them lose clout over time... but Voyager never had an easy time with them, certainly not when it comes to ship-to-ship combat (something they went out of their way to avoid because a cube is a match for a fleet. The small ship at the beginning of Dark Frontier was the only time that comes to mind, and it was tiny enough for the remains to fit in a cargo bay with plenty of room to spare, so comparing that to defeating a cube is like comparing blowing up a shuttlecraft to defeating the Enterprise-E... only infinitely more so. As for simply beaming bombs aboard... one must wonder just why nobody ever thought of doing that before.)
      • A complete reversal of curbstomp status is certainly not supported by the media, but in all of the rest of Trek we saw 5 destroyed Borg vessels, only two of which were the dreaded cubes, and they proceeded with the curbstomping prior to their own destruction. In all non Voyager encounters, what was needed for survival was literal divine intervention, two whole fleets along with their OWN Seven of Nine-like plot device, and Borg separation from the Collective. It's a matter of degree where the flagship of the Federation is rapidly neutralized in seconds (and not being the focus of interest, Sector 001 is) in contrast to Voyager (or the Delta Flyer or One's sphere) repeatedly exchanging weapons fire and somehow living to fight another day often with damaged or destroyed Borg vessels.
      • As a note, though, Enterprise-E managed to completely shrug off a Borg Cube's tractor beams and weapons fire for several seconds, and Voyager was built with the same tech.
      • Except...the Enterprise-E is a Sovereign-class battlecruiser/battleship/advanced deterrent explorer. Voyagers class? Intrepid-class, its not even an cruiser and carries a limited number of Photon Torpedoes...it doesn't even have the advanced Quantum Torpedo technology. It surviving even a minute of fighting against Borg Cube, or worse a Borg Tactical Cube (the thing that the Borg bust out when they get serious) is laughable.
    • As for the battle of Wolf 359 ("The Best of Both Worlds"), don't forget that they had just assimilated Picard, and therefore knew all about Federation technology and tactics. You know the "you only get a couple of shots before they adapt" thing? In that battle, the 40 or so starships were fighting a pre-adapted cube, and couldn't do a thing to hurt it.
    • Lest we not forget Species 8472 owning the Borg in Star Trek Voyager.
    • Enterprise puts the NX-01 through the very epitome of a Curb Stomp Battle in the episode 'Azati Prime'. The ship is attacked by four vessels at once and is very nearly destroyed. There's no Reset Button this time - it remains on the brink of falling apart for the rest of the season.
    • A Star Trek example that involves people instead of spacecraft: Kira vs Damar. When he tries to drag Dukat's daughter home, Kira beats him unconscious in less than a minute without him landing a single punch.
    • While they were only holograms, there was the satisfying battle of Klingons beating down Nazis in a Voyager episode.
    • The Battle of the Omarion Nebula. A force of twenty Romulan and Cardassian warships went on a mission to wipe out the Founders, only to be obliterated by a horde of waiting Dommion ships.
  • You can't mention the Borg and not talk about the Ori from Stargate SG-1. You had the absurdly powerful Ori ships, but then you had the newly built Earth ships with Asgard tech, and ships from the Jaffa and the Lucian alliance. Huge buildup to the battle where four Ori ships emerge from the supergate followed by... an EPIC curb stomp by the Ori that made the Federation's defeat by the Borg look close.
    • Those weapons weren't completed until the Asgard were on the brink of extinction, developing them was basically their final act as a race. Don't forget the Asgard sent one of their own ships to that battle, which couldn't make a dent against the Ori either and was presumably destroyed as well.
    • Every single space battle in Stargate is this trope. Asgard stomp Goa'uld by simply disintegrating their damn ships. Tollan one-shot Goa'uld. Goa'uld get better and one-shot Tollan and Asgard. Asgard get better and one-shot Goa'uld. Replicators stomp Asgard. Asgard catch Replicators with their pants down and stomp them. Ancient weapons stomp Anubis. And so on, up to and including the Ori. There is never a battle won by attrition or superior strategy. This is somewhat averted in Stargate Atlantis by the Wraith's inferior technology winning by sheer numbers, but they get into the curb stomp exchange with humanity in the final season too.
    • In one episode of Stargate Atlantis, a Genii woman has a major grudge against Teyla over the death of her father. When they finally fight, we see a small flaw in her plan -- Teyla's technique is far superior to her own. Only her ferocity and Teyla's lack of desire to kill her extended the fight beyond thirty seconds.
    • In Stargate Universe, pretty much every battle Destiny gets into becomes one of these.
  • In one episode of Dollhouse, Hearn (the disgraced handler) is sent to kill Mellie (as far as we know, a helpless civilian). We know the battle will either end with Mellie's death or Ballard getting back just in time to save the day. Then Mellie's trigger is activated, and it's Hearn that gets curbstomped. Literally, against a table.

Cyberman: Our species are similar, though your design is inelegant.
Dalek: Daleks have no concept of "elegance".
Cyberman: This is obvious.

    • But when shots were fired, it was all over for them.

Cybermen: Daleks be warned! You have declared war upon the Cybermen!
Dalek: This is not war! This Is Pest Control!
Cybermen: We have five million Cybermen! How many are you?
Dalek: Four!
Cybermen: You would destroy the Cybermen with four Daleks?
Dalek: We would destroy the Cybermen with one Dalek! You are superior in only one respect!
Cybermen: What is that?
Dalek: You are better at dying!

    • Besides, it was five million Cyberman versus four Daleks -- you can't blame the Cyberman for miscalculating the odds. It pretty much sounded like usual Dalek arrogance -- it just happened to be true.
    • Let us not forget that the Doctor gets one of his own at the end of the Family of Blood storyline: After disguising himself as a human and hiding in 1913 England, the eponymous Family track him down and force a confrontation, hoping to gain immortality by stealing his Time Lord essence. They lose so fast and so decisively they don't even get a fight scene; they each end up with various forms of eternal punishment, to fit their temerity...
    • From The Poison Sky, once UNIT overcomes the Sontaran cordolane signal, the Sontaran "Super Soldiers" are slaughtered by human soldiers with assault rifles.
  • This was one of the reasons the season one finale of Heroes was so lackluster. Multiple-superpowered hero versus multiple superpowered villain was doomed to come down to the quickest draw. Of course, it didn't even get that far. Budget restraints meant there was no money for Sylar's side of the fight. Either that or he was trying to beat Peter down Marquis of Queensbury style which, while stupid, makes about as much sense as the rest of the fight.
  • Andy Richter vs. Wolf Blitzer on Celebrity Jeopardy! The score as they were going into Final Jeopardy? Andy, $39,000 and Wolf negative $4,600.
    • While we're on the subject of Jeopardy!, Watson, a thinking computer made by IBM, creamed two human champions of the show.
  • There is a celebrity episode of Lingo, in which one team dealt the other an unmatched 500-0 beatdown. I repeat, a celebrity episode. Watch it here.
  • The vast majority of villains on Smallville get one of these at the hands of Clark. Really, most episodes revolve around him having to find out who the villain is and/or figure out how to separate them from their chunk of Kryptonite Factor. Once that's done, everything goes into slow motion, Clark walks up to the motionless bad guy, and takes them down with one punch. They've been getting a little better about not doing that, though.
  • Battlestar Galactica - The Cylon attack on the colonies is a perfect example of a Curb Stomp Battle.
    • And then every time the Cylons come directly up against Galactica with her back against the wall, the Curb Stomp Battle goes the other way, as human Battlestars are ton-for-ton superior to Cylon Basestars, and the Cylon fleet is so spread out that they can never concentrate enough fleet power to finish off the Galactica.
  • This is the normal outcome of an attack by the Shadows against a Younger Race in Babylon 5.
    • Oddly enough, the Shadows suffered this every time they faced the Vorlons in battle. The interesting part is the Vorlons were only meant to have been a few million years old, yet the Shadows were billions of years old and stated to be far more advanced. This didn't seem to stop the Vorlons from wiping the floor with the Shadows in every one of their confrontations.
      • It was somewhat implied that the defeats were part of the game the Shadows and Vorlons were playing: the periodic wars are supposed to end with the strongest of the young races driving the Shadows back and being stronger for it. Either or both could easily be using ships well below their capabilities for this reason. The other First Ones ripped through both sides in the last battle, and they weren't even using dedicated warships.
      • While the Shadows were older, the Vorlons had vastly superior military technology-- but this didn't matter in the end because their war with the Shadows was ideological. They would never wipe out the Shadows because they needed to prove their own ideology right and have the Shadows acknowledge it, and vice versa. It should be noted that a direct attack by a Vorlon fleet on a Shadow one was seen as "breaking the rules", and Kosh was murdered shortly afterwards as punishment, which Kosh was fully aware would happen when he ordered the attack.
    • It was also the invariable result of encounters between EarthForce and the Minbari during the Earth-Minbari War. John Sheridan freely admitted that his destruction of the Minbari flagship Black Star was the only victory that Earth had during the conflict.
      • The Minbari ships had artificial gravity. The Earth forces, YEARS after the Minbari surrendered to them, still had to emulate gravity with the centrifugal force of rotating sections (including the eponymous space station itself). All the Minbari had to do to neutralize any Earth ship in the early battles was fly a fighter close enough to it that the Earth ship's crew began falling to the walls and ceiling until they were reduced to paste.
      • For reference, the first Minbari attack against the Earth Alliance lasts all of 12 seconds, and only because the Minbari were kind enough to let the Earth ships get close enough to fire first. Unfortunatley for the Minbari, this also allowed one of the Nova-X prototypes to ram a Sharlin war cruiser, destroying both.
    • When Sheridan takes his fleet of White Stars against Earth Force. He loses a few white stars, sure, but the Earth Force loses a lot more.
  • Ever since Chuck Bartowski learned kung fu, fights against the bad guys tend to go this way more often than not.
  • In The Sarah Connor Chronicles, pick a fight between Cameron and a human. Any "fight." They are... rather one-sided. The episode "The Brothers Of Nablus" was pretty much one long example of this, as it involved Cameron beating up, killing, manhandling, and otherwise kicking the hell out of various people.
    • There's also the FBI raid against Cromartie's apartment in the first season finale. It didn't end well for the FBI.
    • Even becomes a major plot point in season 2 when John realises that Cameron couldn't possibly be the one who killed Riley, since Riley's body showed signs of having fought back unarmed for more than 1/10th of a second.

John: How long do you think you could survive... with Cameron? If she wanted to kill you, face to face.
Derek: What kind of weapon do I have?
John: Your fists, and your elbows, and your fingernails, and your teeth.
Derek: Against her? Those aren't weapons.
John: I know.

  • In the 1998 Merlin series, Merlin (wielding Excalibur) takes on Vortigern, the usurper king of Britain, on a frozen river. Merlin allows Vortigern to attempt one blow, which severs his own blade on Excalibur, and then kills Vortigern by making the ice beneath his feet break open with magic, sending him into the icy water.
  • A rare nonlethal literal example occurs in an episode of The Sopranos. Tony finds a tooth in his pants leg later.
  • Mighty Morphin Power Rangers used this when Tommy first shows up. Tommy could just pwn the other Rangers on his own, of course. But he decides to isolate Jason in Rita's Eldritch Location and take on the other rangers individually. He also invades the Megazord cockpit. Jason does escape, just in time for Tommy, Goldar, and Scorpina to grow to huge size and destroy the Megazord (conveniently robbed of its solar power by a spell to cause a solar eclipse). Then he gets the Dragonzord, and It Got Worse. However, once they destroy the Sword of Darkness, he has his Heel Face Turn, and like all bad Rangers, he's rarely a team unto himself again.
    • Speaking of the Power Rangers in Space, one of the big reasons why the Psycho Rangers are so popular (aside from the evil counterpart factor and visual coolness) is the fact that in their first few appearances, they kicked the crap out of the Space Rangers. Keep in mind that the team included a Red Ranger with presumably years of training and the previous year's Turbo Rangers, so these were not inexperienced fighters. This is justified by the fact that each Psycho Ranger was specifically created to be the perfect counter for the battle style favored by the Space Ranger of their corresponding color. As long as a Psycho Ranger is facing the Space Ranger of the same color one-on-one, it will always be a Curb Stomp Battle in favor of the Psycho Ranger.
    • In Power Rangers Dino Thunder, Zeltrax vs. Tommy battles are usually even before it is revealed that It's Personal for Zeltrax. After he becomes his rival, he seldom lands a single blow on Tommy, who handles him more easily than a Mook. Even having a Super Mode can't make his final fight with Tommy even enough to be any fun.
    • It is also common in most seasons of Power Rangers for the villain's Dragon to serve as a measuring stick to show how the rangers are getting progessively stronger over the course of the season. Early in the season, he single-handedly defeats the entire team with ease. By mid-season, the rangers as a team are evenly matched with The Dragon. By the end of the season, a single ranger (usually the Red Ranger) soundly defeats The Dragon one-on-one.
    • In the Power Rangers Samurai episode "Return of the Master", Xandred gets pissed enough to leave the ship despite his exponentially quicker dryout rate. He knocks all the Rangers around, even beating Jayden's Super Mode. Such is his rage that Serrator bails rather than face him.
  • Michael Westen is more than competent when it comes to combat. He knows lots of martial arts and has had to use them a lot. However, show creator Matt Nix and actor Jeffery Donovan like realism. In fact, Donovan has a black belt in karate and has studied aikido and jujitsu besides. So in the first season they had him face off against a bounty hunter. A huge bounty hunter. Even with a home court advantage, Michael cannot win this fight. Westen's narration makes it clear that he can't win, and that it's because the guy is just plain big. In the commentary, Donovan and Nix state that they wanted to show Michael in a fight he couldn't win. Michael tries a choke hold and fails. Michael tries to hit him and fails. The guy's choking Michael when Fi takes him out from behind.
  • It's not on the same scale of some of the above examples, but at one point Glee's Santana Lopez challenges Lauren Zizes over her developing relationship with Puck. Santana may be a tough-talking cheerleader who can hold her own in a Cat Fight with Quinn, but Lauren is the state champion in greco-roman wrestling, she wrestles on the boys' team, and she has a bad attitude to boot. What follows is both an awesomely hilarious parody of WWF fights, and a complete Curb Stomping of Santana. Coach Beiste has to carry her to the nurse's office over her shoulder after breaking up the fight...
  • The Charmed Ones seldom have a decent battle. Like Smallville, most of the story is finding out the whos, whats, and wheres. There are few enemies the sisters can't defeat by literally gesturing in their general direction (okay, sometimes for the really tough ones, they've got to say "The power of three will set us free" first.)
  • In general, it's easy to find these on 24 Hour News Networks, especially if they have a political bias (in the US, Fox News is notoriously right-wing, and MSNBC is notoriously left-leaning.) Any time there's a debate about an issue, the network will find an incredibly competent and knowledgeable person to argue the side of the argument they support, and a total amateur to defend the side they're against, who will inevitably get shredded once they start to discuss the issue. It's also common on The View for the liberal Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar to steamroll over the conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck (of course, that's mostly because Goldberg and Behar are much louder).
  • Happy Endings had a non-lethal comedic version. Dave and Max get drunk and decide to confront Bo, the guy whose confession of love caused Alex to leave Dave at the altar. Dave and Bo are actually talking things out peacefully when Max sucker punches Bo, apparently not realizing that all the trophies in Bo's apartment were for martial arts competitions. The next scene consists of Max and Dave getting punched and kicked in the head multiple times.
  • On How I Met Your Mother Barney is banned for a time from laser tag for getting too competitive and actually attempting to do this to some elementary school kids he was playing against.
    • Ted loses his only fight ever in this way, but the guy who knocked him out was himself taken down in an Offscreen Moment of Awesome by Marshall.

Future Ted: Kids, I can't tell you whether fighting is good or bad; and I can't tell you not to do it. I can only give you one piece of advice about fighting: don't get into a fight with your Uncle Marshall. 'Cause that guy's friggin' crazy.

  • One episode of Bully Beatdown had a bully who was so much of a prick, the host, Jason "Mayhem" Miller, himself stepped into the ring against him. The bully kept talking shit the whole time before the match, even calling Mayhem a wimp. In Round One, Mayhem got the bully to tapout twice in 30 seconds (counting the time it took the bully to get back up). In Round Two, Mayhem toyed with the bully for a while before dropping him 3 times in a row with 3 hits. The whole time Mayhem had a grin on his face.
    • A later episode posed a problem because the bully weighed only 150 lbs: It took a while to find a fighter that small. The diminutive fighter managed to finish both rounds in less than a minute and the bully had to stop in the middle of the post-fight monologue to vomit.
  • To say that Earl Hickey is not good at fighting would be putting it mildly, his every fight ending on the losing side of one of these. He once got pummeled senseless by the one-legged girl's boyfriend, a man with a single arm and no legs.
  • Being Human (UK) on the last episode of season 4 when Annie shows up in full-on Mama Bear mode, shouts "GIVE ME BACK MY FUCKING BABY!!", then promptly curb-stomps many of the old ones singlehandedly, then sacrifices her best friend's baby to save the world.
  • In Survivor: Palau, almost all the young and physically fit contestants ended up on one tribe while almost all the older and more physically feeble contestants ended up on the other tribe. Guess which tribe ended up losing all the immunity challenges and all but two of the reward challenges? The tribe who...wasn't the most physically able but had a strong teamwork spirit and intelligent leaders who carried their tribe to victory while the more physically strong tribe floundered about with nary a clue about how to strategize or work together.
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