It’s alright for people to be smug if they are cool, which is the case with Dudley. He’s a much better character than Balrog.
And yes Dudley is a light heavyweight so they could legitimately compete.
This is what I was gonna say. Do we know for a fact that Dudley’s meant to be a heavyweight? Right now, that division is for those over 86.2kg (88.5 kg in some rulesets). So from the sprite it’s dubious. If he’s loosely based on Chris Eubank, then he’s probably a middleweight.
But yeah, if they were both in their prime I’d say it was a contest of punching power vs speed/agility, with Balrog probably having the slight edge.
Obviously that’s subjective.
The words “Dan Hibiki” come to mind when I read this…