Vegeta: Inferiority Complex

[James R. Cadwell]

Goku was holding back a lot against Fat Buu.

Goku wasn't trying to kill Fat Buu, but where is it stated that Goku wasn't using a significant percentage of his power during that fight?

Goku says he KNOWS he could have beaten Fat Buu, he was just half-heartedly engaging him in something of a playful sparring match to buy as much time as he could.

(1): IIRC, Goku only says that he probably could have defeated Fat Buu, and doesn't speak in definite terms both times the subject is discussed.

(2): Gohan was just fooling around with Super Buu, too. Neither Goku or Gohan were trying to immediately kill their opponents, but it's still easy to see that there's a huge difference in power between them. Fat Buu could affect Goku, Super Buu couldn't affect Gohan.

Goku never used SSJ3 against Super Buu, so we couldn't really know how well he'd do.

He said he would be killed.

Perhaps when he confessed he couldn't beat Super Buu, he just wanted the others to have a chance to fight him, as he claims before the Kid Buu fight, and maybe saved SSJ3 while around Vegeta until there was no other option so he wouldn't hurt the poor bastard's feelings.

Vegeta had already seen SSJ3 when Goku said that Super Buu would kill him, and everyone else was incapacitated. According to Goku, the only viable option was to fuse with Vegeta. Needless to say, It would have been easier for Goku to fight Super Buu as SSJ3 instead of trying to convince Vegeta to use the fusion dance.

I like the idea that Kid Buu isn't strong as Super Buu. Narrative-wise, it pushes more urgency into the fusions and Gohan's power-up. It's just plain STUPID if Goku was the strongest, all along.

Yeah. It's a plot-hole, since Goku is clearly helpless against the supposedly weaker forms of Buu. Basically, all of the evidence and dialogue up until the Kid Buu fight indicates that Goku is substantially less powerful than all of the Super Buu forms. A couple of lines of dialogue from that fight imply that he isn't. It's easier to say that people screwed up sensing Kid Buu's "ki" than it is to ignore pretty much everything established up until that point.