Was Goku right to let Gohan fight Cell?

[Lord Beerus]

Cell initial: 25 (50% suppressed)
Goku: 19
Gohan: 23
Cell weakened: 11
Goku weakened: 8
Cell max: 50
Cell maxed weakened: 36 (+25)

Even if it's 50%, the number scan still work in Cell's favor. So saying he would've lost easily without a Senzu isn't necessarily true.

Huh? Since when was SSJ Gohan weaker than Cell (suppressed)? Everybody was blown away by Gohan's strength when he powered up against Cell. Even Cell was shocked. I'd have SSJ Gohan on par with Cell, if not, slightly stronger. And if that how strong you think SSJ Gohan is at full power then those numbers definitely can't work.

Gohan gets his ass handed him, he only gets one good kick in. Cell nearly kills him. Even if I changed it to fit your interpretation, the numbers still work.

Cell never seemed like he was going to kill Gohan. Yeah, Gohan took a beating but he shrugged it off pretty quickly. Plus, there is no way that Cell was ever stronger than SSJ2 Gohan. SSJ2 Gohan with one broken arm, depleted Ki and holding back his power out of sudden fear was still able to hold his own against a fully charged Kamehameha from SPC. Once used his full power he won that beam clash against Cell instantly.

[Sayo-chan]

Cell never seemed like he was going to kill Gohan. Yeah, Gohan took a beating but he shrugged it off pretty quickly. Plus, there is no way that Cell was ever stronger than SSJ2 Gohan. SSJ2 Gohan with one broken arm, depleted Ki and holding back his power out of sudden fear was still able to hold his own against a fully charged Kamehameha from SPC. Once used his full power he won that beam clash against Cell instantly.

He may have been going to, but that doesn't change the fact he almost did. He constricts him so hard that Goku and Piccolo get ready to jump in to save him. Did he? He didn't do anything from being bear hugged until transforming. He was ruffled, cut nastily on his forehead and visibly shaken/sweating. Cell on the other hand was enjoying every minute of it. Again, your interpretation isn't the only valid interpretation. I see things completely differently, as such with this post I made:

Your opinion is not uncommon, however, I'm one of the few that doesn't share it. I'll do my best to articulate why:

In researching Cell's anatomy over the past year, I've studied the last couple of chapters of the Cell Games really well. Gohan is initially confident, so's Cell. Goku's pissed off he's still alive. Why he didn't feel him power up in the afterlife? Plot hole? I don't know. Maybe Cell went to Namek to relax for a few minutes and chat with the locals about how Freeza sucks. Anyway, Gohan's ki is cut in half, he states this. He says Cell's powered up more than he thought, implying that either he wasn't expecting the blast to do much damage (i.e. he underestimated him, thus perhaps voiding his initial confidence all together), he's truly terrified by cell powering up his Kamehameha or both. Goku motivates Gohan to retaliate, that he can win. Gohan believes in himself, until Cell pushes too hard. If you were Gohan and you're pushing, and by the looks of the panels he is, wouldn't you feel tapped out? Like it's over? Now if you were Goku, wouldn't you wanna motivate your kid to do the absolute best he can do, even if it's not enough? We don't know if Goku can feel Cell's ki through Kaio. Filler implies it's felt all the way to Namek, but that's neither here nor there (just an interesting factoid). My bet is he can't, so if we operate under the assumption that Goku doesn't know how strong Cell is. He also doesn't know to what extent Gohan's injured, beyond what he can see anyhow. All he knows that Gohan, when enraged freaks out and goes overboard, beyond what he has left sometimes. Vegeta touches on this during his fight with Dabra. If we analyze the struggle in the manga, Gohan's losing throughout the entire thing. He regains some confidence, but it's immediately shutdown. Why? Cell's overpowering him.

Panel of Gohan with confidence again:

I'm not saying it's like he had before, but it's clearly enough to think he has a chance.

So what happens next is when the beams hit:

Immediately, Gohan's feeling the pressure and struggling. Immediately, whereas Cell is pretty much laughing through his teeth, enjoying every second of it.

It doesn't last long at all, only a few pages, but in those few pages, Gohan loses. Cell enters the finishing blow just as Vegeta hits him. Gohan doesn't notice, so Goku has to alert him about it (the chance to kill Cell). He uses his remaining strength to shift the beam struggle in his favor and win. By the time Cell looks back, his body's already being destroyed. What could he do? Jumping out of the in-universe thinking for a second, if Gohan could win purely on his own power, then why did Toriyama give him two people to help? It seems to me like Gohan gave it what he could, realized that if he gave a push like with the one he killed Cell with, that it wouldn't be enough and it'd just exhaust his ki. In fact, this is supported by the fact Gohan drops into his base form after the fight, having to be carried by yamcha to God's love shack. Remember that if Cell wasn't distracted, it wouldn't disintegrate him so fast, which means he could use Goku's Instantaneous Movement to get out of the way, like Goku did with his Kamehameha. That's even assuming he couldn't push it back, which I'm betting he could.

Let's also not forget Cell lost ki regenerating, so did he really power up to his maximum?

I recall something, which may be anime only, about how Goku says Gohan's stronger than him. That's why I made him slightly stronger.

[Super Saiyan Turlast x4]

I think Cell was at 100% when he returned to earth. He lost Chi regenerating from Goku's Kamehameha because he still had a lot of Chi left. When he exploded on Kaio's, I doubt he really had much Chi since it was a miracle he was able to regenerate into this Perfect form in the first place. The regeneration here pretty much healed him and gave him a new power-up.

[Sayo-chan]

I don't follow your logic. There was no mention of Cell losing ki when he was regenerating from Vegeta's Final Flash, and he obviously had a ton of it left. So why didn't he suffer a huge blow to his ki? It's likely he lost some, but it wasn't significant enough to be mentioned, which is contradictory to your hypothesis.

Regeneration seems to take away ki based upon the wounds its healing. Bar the zenkai, why would he gain all his ki back from regenerating? His cells remembered his perfect form, so that's what they chose to regenerate into, but if he didn't have much left, why would he gain any? If we assume his 2nd form only has 10% of his ki left, and he regenerates into his perfect form, all that increases is the max ki variable, making the ki variable significantly less percentage-wise, say around 3%. Piccolo loses ki from doing it, so does Cell. It really doesn't make sense for him to've returned to 100%. The boost from the zenkai powers him up, but from what percent? This still remains an unknown variable.