Off topic from the reply, but is anyone else upset that Vegeta didn't get to fight at all? He always gets shafted and I'm so tired of it. Maybe I'm just forgetting the previous arcs but I always feel like Vegeta is done dirty. It might just be me though since he's my favorite character, but I want to know what the general opinion is.
Back on topic to the reply(sorry to make the message structure confusing but I wanted to keep everything in spoiler tags):
What do you mean by Gohan took no damage? He took more hits than Goku did from what I counted. I'm sorry I'm trying to see what you're seeing but I can't, but to be fair I'm mostly skimming the scans because I'm spending most of my time working on my thesis so forgive me for not noticing something obvious.
I think you're right that I forgot how UI works. I think it was mentioned by Whis already that UI is not a transformation, but a mindset. But in that case, it makes it less impressive that Gohan knocked Goku out of UI because it means it just made Goku lose focus/calmness and nothing else(which makes sense seeing as how Goku went right back into UI without any issues). From that point of view, it still took Gohan all of that effort just to get 1 good hit that didn't even knock him out of a transformation, but just surprised Goku enough to the point that he wasn't calm. Looking at the scans again, it looks like it might have even been played off as comic relief than anything.
This just confirms even more to me that there's no getting around the fact that Gohan over-exerted himself just to get 1 good hit in. That's like a boxer who comes out in the first round throwing all his energy in just to get knocked out in the second round. I make the same mistake of over-exerting my energy when I'm in boxing, but I just can't keep track of my energy that well because I'm not a professional. To me, the fight was clearly going in the direction of Gohan wearing himself out before he managed to come anywhere close to finishing the fight.
Just to clarify, who is it you're saying Vegeta has more experience than? I assume only Goten, Trunks and Broly, but do you mean Gohan as well? I like to think Vegeta is just as/more experienced than Goku, but that might just be my bias, but I haven't really done a deep dive on the series in a long time so please correct me if I'm wrong.
I do remember that you have to be faster than the other person by at least a little bit to hit them in UI, but Goku has been hit by every single antagonist he used UI against, so does that even matter now? By that I mean, it's been the case that if Goku uses UI, he gets hit regardless of the fact that UI is supposed to make it so he's difficult to hit, so it seems like that's more of an ideal situation than reality.
No I didn't see where it was stated that Gohan hasn't mastered Beast, in fact I thought he said Piccolo helped him master it? Regardless, my personal belief is that Gohan has indeed not mastered Beast, but I'm trying to be objective in saying that I didn't see any proof and if anything I saw proof to the contrary. I also can't find the link to the leaked scans again so I'm going off memory right now.
I don't think it matters that Gohan hasn't mastered Beast at all though since Goku hasn't mastered UI. I don't see any objective point to either character's favor with that fact, but I might be missing your point.
I don't think counting scratch lines means anything. Maybe it does but I thought if a character has a bruise or scratch line, that means they took damage and there's nothing more to look into there other than that fact.
I remember the Cell vs Trunks thing, but I thought the point was that Cell could also buff up his muscles and then he was stronger than Trunks? It wasn't that Trunks was stronger, it was that cell was strong enough without having to buff himself up like that so he could keep his speed, but if Cell wanted to, he could buff himself up and make himself stronger than Trunks. Because of that, I don't see what the point of that analogy is. Also, I don't think that Vegeta saying that Goku has more experience than Gohan means that he has less power than Gohan, that just seems like a stretch. You could just argue that he was pointing out why Gohan wasn't able to do as well in the fight as he thought, and I think Vegeta mentioned that Goku's UI is steering the battle in his favor so that would line up.
I appreciate you taking the time to make all of those analogies and points, but if anything I think you just made it more clear that we cannot prove that Gohan is stronger than Goku. I don't even know if we can prove that Gohan is stronger than Broly just from one page that shows him throwing Broly. Don't you think the evidence is lacking?
To be fair, if Vegeta had actually gotten a fight in this chapter, I would probably be trying to argue how he's just a strong as whoever the strongest is out of this chapter at least because I'm biased towards him, but I'm always trying to be objective and I feel like I can just see the pages for what they are more-so in this chapter because my interest is really only hooked when Vegeta gets a good amount of screen time.