How powerful is Cody Travers?

Question

How strong is Cody from the Final Fight and Street Fighter universe within the canon of its lore?

Cody is a character who has been shown to perform supernatural feats of strength, such as demolishing reenforced concrete walls by punching them and generating tornadoes with his fists. He was also a fifth degree karate black belt (considered a "master" under most ranking systems) before the events of his first appearance in Final Fight 1. However, due to the branching mechanics of Final Fight as game series, and the theoretical nature of Street Fighter, it can be difficult to find official sources on what other characters in his universe he has, or is capable of, defeating.

Although characters within fighting games such as Street Fighter IV are balanced to be relatively equal for the sake of gameplay, their canon strengths vary much more diversely within the lore of the series. It has been implied through battle dialog that Cody is intentionally restraining himself from fighting at his full potential due to both his outwardly lazy attitude, as well as his handcuffs, which he is capable of removing at will but chooses to wear during fights in order to intentionally handicap himself.

How much strength he is capable of bringing to bear? How much is he "holding back"? How does he compare to ultra-powerful characters such as Akuma and Oro?

Answer 1

Cody's level of strength is difficult to calculate because he has no known feats outside of Final Fight. Capcom was smart enough to make everything speculation with him by not having him fight anyone of any importance in any of his story or make anyone fight him.

We know he can defeat Guy of the Bushin and Guy has even given M. Bison trouble before so we can compare that way. We also know that in his win quotes, he is impressed with Ryu (But that can be because Ryu is a fighter who does not hold back and Cody would be very interested in a fighter who can fight well and doesn't waste time). His win quotes also say how unimpressed he is with dark hadou (But that doesn't necessarily have to be because of its level of power but it could be based on the fact that it is evil and even though Cody is a bitter man, he is shown to dislike evil very much as he makes excuses to fight against evil opponents).

When facing Oni, Oni says that if Cody doesn't restrain himself that Cody would probably survive their fight (Which is not something Oni says to anyone else). All of these give speculation that Cody is strong, possibly stronger than Ryu; probably on Akuma's or Oro's level. However, because it is speculation, we can only assume he is that strong.

For all we know, Guy could feel sorry for him and doesn't completely destroy him in a fight and those quotes could be taunts from Cody to his opponent assuming he wins (As almost every character has win quotes about how great they are; even Dan. In fact, Sean's win quote against Oro is, "You're great old man. You've shown me how to defeat a worthless opponent." We all know Sean wouldn't even make Oro's radar).

So all of Cody is non-canon speculation. Could he be as strong as Akuma? Maybe. Or, perhaps the only fighters he has encountered since escaping jail were useless thugs and perhaps that's why he's so bored all the time.

Answer 2

Although this is considered opinion, my math is based off the street fighter encyclopedia which many consider non-canon, but the closest I could show you is compared to Ryu in terms of physical feats (at bottom is link where calculations are based off of).

• I have looked into the boulder that Ryu is carrying and it appears that the boulder he carries is 30 tons, which is 60000 lbs.
• Cody can break down a 50cm wall which converts to 19.6inches, the prison used in the example website I showed you was 6 inches thick, which is 3 times less than what Cody can break.

So take the 320 and times that by 3 = 960 times that by 10 lbf (weight of jack hammer) = 9600, times that by 2 for both of Cody's hands which is 19200. Now being that when you lift something up most of your power comes from you legs, and being that legs are generally 1-3 times stronger than your arms i'll give Cody the benefit of the doubt and say his legs are two times stronger, and since Cody has 2 legs that'd be 38400 with both of his legs combine, and than add his arms to the equation which would be 57600 lbs + we could add back strength but lets leave it at this.

So I could see Cody lifting the boulder of 60000 lbs if we say he can muster 57600lbs without adding his back strength or anything else. I see Cody as above Ryu, probably the same level as evil Ryu or a bit lower but most likely below Akuma, although I didn't add this into the equation i would like to point out that Cody is restraining himself by using handcuffs. Now there are a lot of haters saying how long the handcuffs are. Websites like this one explain just how much they can hurt. If you feel this is incorrect feel free to leave a comment.

Point is though is that they are restraining with or without the chain, it is very hard to bend your fists and after a while of wearing them and moving in them it can even hurt to make a fist. I know because I speak from experience because I cosplayed as Cody. So I would say that Cody is significantly restraining himself and I feel fair saying he would be able to carry 1.5 times more than what equated above because if he can punch harder it most likely means he can also kick harder than I originally thought. And at this point he may possibly be stronger than Evil Ryu, especially if we give him a knife.

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Source for the math above.