Monkey D. Luffy is know for humiliating opponents throughout One Piece.
Unless.. he's fighting one of these eleven characters..
For someone who is a Shounen protagonist and should have the thickest plot armour in history,
Luffy has actually been defeated at least 11 times.
One of them is a major surprise, one is almost as controversial as the zoro vs sanji debate
and the remaining ones all follow the same 4 simple step formula, that make one piece
so great.
Like the time Luffy got defeated and almost captured by his Arch Nemesis Smoker.
Before even properly starting his adventure, Luffy traveled to an island called Logue Town,
where Gol D. Roger, the first pirate king, was both born and ultimately executed.
Here, Luffy runs into the marine captain Smoker, who recognizes him form his first bounty poster
he just received after beating Arlong.
Smoker is the first character introduced with the powers of a Logia Devil fruit power, that
turns his body into smoke, making him completely immune to any physical attacks.
As a result, Luffy has no chance at all against the Marine and is defeated in an instant.
He is only spared because his father Dragon steps in to stop Smoker.
As a result, Luffy is able to proceed with his crew towards the grand line.
The pattern Eiichiro Oda, the author of One PIece, uses here, are the same 4 steps that
he uses with every single opponent, that is able to beat Luffy.
He first introduces the villain in an impressive way, showing how powerful they are and have
them defeat Luffy, in this case Luffy not landing a single hit on Smoker.
In the second step, Luffy barely manages to escape, like Dragon stepping in to safe his
son.
In the third step, this gives Luffy the need to grow and be creative, either as a person
or in terms of power to overcome this newfound obstacle.
Here, Luffy learns that he can’t beat every enemy he faces and that sometimes you have
to simply run away to come back stronger.
Which leads to step 4, Luffy succeeding in his mission, like in this case, making it
to the entrance of the grand line.
You can see the exact same formula with Luffy’s third major defeat in the story as well, when
he encounters another marine, this time one of the 3 most powerful marines, the admiral
Aokiji early on in the story, one of the most powerful characters in the entire story, period.
Aokiji, just like Smoker is a Logia fruit user, who’s entire body is made of Ice and
can’t take physical damage without an ability called Haki, that Luffy only learns later
on in the story.
With Luffy having no way of dealing any damage to his opponent once again, he is frozen solid
by Aokiji.
Step number 1.
However, as we learn a little bit later in the story, Aokiji is more of an ally than
an enemy to the straw hat crew.
He just wanted to test Luffy’s resolve and if he was actually worthy of watching over
Nico Robin, a girl that has been chased her entire life and that Aokiji had saved as a
kid.
Thus, he doesn’t actually capture or kill Luffy, but spares him.
Which is how Luffy, Step number 2, escapes.
Even though Aokiji tells him that he should send Nico Robin away, because she will only
bring trouble to him, again this was a test, Luffy has already accepted her as part of
his family, Step 3, and is able to proceed towards Water 7 to get his ship fixed.
Step, number 4.
And speaking of water seven, Luffy has his butt kicked by another official from the world
government, the organization that leads the Marines and rules the world, who want to capture
Nico Robin for her knowledge about the lost history, they are trying to keep hidden from
everyone.
The government agent Lucci has eaten the leopard devil fruit, that gives him the ability of
the animal plus superhuman strength and endurance.
The leopards speed combined with the 6 special techniques known by the the governments top
agents make him the first opponent in the story, that Luffy could actually touch in
theory, but who is simply physically too fast and strong.
As a result Luffy is utterly humiliated in this fight.
The difference in power is so bad, that Lucci has no interest in finishing Luffy off at
all and instead simply tosses him out of the building before he leaves the island with
the captured Robin.
Therefore Luffy survives once again.
This time, in order to save his crew member, he trains hard and develops 2 new techniques
for his devil fruit, that allow him to defeat Lucci in one of the best fights of the series.
As a result he ultimately manages to liberate Robin in my personal favorite moment of the
entire show.
Now you might or might not have realized, that I actually skipped one of Luffy’s major
defeats: Against the Warloard Crocodile during the Alabasta saga.
luffy didn’t just lose once against him, but actually twice.
Just like Smoker and Aokiji, Crocodile is a Logia devil fruit user who is made of sand.
Thus Luffy’s punches do nothing once again and he is gruesomely impaled.
This time, he only survives thanks to Robin’s help, who is still an enemy at this point.
I hope you see how nicely all of these defeats are connected.
In this case, simply getting stronger won’t be enough, so Luffy has to use his creativity
to overcome this enemy.
He has figured out that his fist covered in blood can deal damage to Crocodile, since
sand’s weakness is moisture.
So for his rematch he brings a barrel of water to the fight and manages to take Crocodile
out that way.
That allows him to save the kingdom of Alabasta and free Nico Robin from her dark past as
well.
Dark, like the dwelling place of the 5th character that managed to defeat Luffy.
This one might come as a bit of a surprise, even if you have already watched up to this
point.
I definitely didn’t remember that this happened at first.
On Thriller bark, Luffy faces Gekko Moria, one of the seven warloards of the sea, that
has the unique ability to steal people’s shadows and infuse dead objects with them.
Now this defeat was really sneaky, but as Luffy and Co were infiltrating the spooky
castle, they got trapped in a room with countless of Moria’s zombies, who had already managed
to take Zoro’s shadow.
And while Luffy was facing the Zombie who now had Zoro’s powers and personality, he
was overwhelmed by tiny little spider mice zombies who managed to seal him inside a coffin,
so that Moria could steal his Shadow too and infuse it into the ancient giant oars.
To be fair, it was not exactly a 1v1 in this case, but Moria’s entire character was centered
around letting others fight for him, plus it was his devil fruit ability that took Luffy
out.
Luffy once again managed to escape however.
He infused himself with hundreds of shadows and becomes nightmare Luffy, still one of
the coolest forms he has ever had in the story, and manages to take back his shadow and defeat
Moria.
___
But while this defeat might have been the most surprising Luffy has every experienced,
it is nothing against what happens next.
Travelling from Thriller Bark to Sabaody Archipelago, Luffy and the crew experience their most crushing
defeat yet.
He attacks one of the world nobles, the rulers of the world, who was trying to buy his mermaid
friend Jamee as a slave.
This is the highest crime anyone can commit, and so the Goverment sends over another one
of the 3 Marine admirals.
This time it’s not Aokiji, but Kizaru, who ate the light logia fruit, once again making
him an enemy Luffy can’t beat.
On top of that there is also Kuma and Sentomaru, who decimate the entire crew.
Luffy doesn’t know yet, that similar to Aokiji, Kuma actually does this to protect
Luffy and the others from being captured or killed by Kizaru.
That way Luffy escapes by being teleported to another island.
However in this case the growth from this defeat doesn’t happen right away, making
this the curious exception in this list.
Instead, Luffy finds out that his brother ace has been captured and is about to be executed
by the Marines.
So he goes on a mission to free him from the hellish government prison impel down.
The main antagonist here is Maggelan, the warden of the prison that has eaten the Poison
Poison fruit, that allows him to produce and manipulate any poison imaginable.
He stands out from this list, as Magellan not only defeated Luffy without any effort
at all, but also Blackbeard and his entire crew, as they were infiltrating the prison.
Luffy only manages to survive his deadly poisoning thanks to you being subscribed to the channel.
And also his newly made ally Ivankov, who’s abilities safe Luffy’s life.
Luffy becomes immune to pretty much all poisons hereafter and manages to make it out of the
prison and towards Marineford, the Marine’s headquarters, where his brother had been taken.
However here at the marine headquarters, amidst the biggest war in the history of one piece
so far, Luffy experiences the biggest defeat in the entire story so far, which results
in the lowest point of his journey, to the point where he almost gives up his will to
live all together.
Luffy isn’t defeated only once during this war.
He is surrounded by characters way out of his league, but through sheer will alone and
with the help of all the new allies he has made, he manages to free his brother from
his shackles.
However, ultimately, Akainu,t he strongest and crulest of the 3 admirals, is the one
defeating Luffy here, with his powerful magma logia abilities.
The only reason his life is spared once again, is because his brother and Jinbei sacrifice
themselves for him.
It is the first and only time so far in the story, where Luffy doesn’t succeed in his
mission during an arc.
He wanted to save his brother and failed.
Which makes it the most impactful invent of One PIece to this day.
However, Luffy did learn from his defeat.
It inspired him to become a better captain who can properly take care of his crew and
taught him that you can’t always expect things to just work out without any consequences.
And even better, to give Luffy a major payoff and win after this gigantic loss, after a
2 year time skip full of trianing and new abilities, Luffy is not only able to beat
the Pacifista that he had so much trouble with on Sabaody, but he is now also able to
use Haki, the ability necessary to fight against Logia type users like Smoker, crocodile or
any of the three admirals.
Which makes the next character that defeats Luffy just the more surprising.
The crazy scientist Ceasar Clown, who rules over the apocalyptic island Punk Hazard is
another Logia fruit user.
His body is made out of gas.
Luffy is able to survive Ceasar’s inital poison gas attack, ethically quite questionable
by the way, thanks to his poison immunity from the prison.
But then the scientist removes all the air from the room, since oxygen is also a gas,
and thus makes Luffy pass out.
Very clever fighting.
Luffy once again manages to get away easily with the help of his new ally, the warloard
trafalgar law.
Luffy learns from his earlier mistake and takes out Ceasar in a quite satisfying manner.
Not as satisfying though as against this next enemy that managed to defeat Luffy.
This is probably the most controversial and maybe unique candidate on this list.
Charlotte Katakuri is the strongest pirate in the crew of the emperor Big Mom, one of
the four strongest pirates who rule this part of the world.
Katakuri has eaten the Mochi Mochi fruit, Mochi being sticky japanese rice cake.
His fruit is pretty much the same as Luffy’s rubber abilities, only that katakuri is better
at using it, he also has way better Haki abilities and overall outclasses Luffy by miles.
He completely dominates their fight to such an extend, that Luffy gets as frustrated as
we haven’t seen him for a long time in the story.
He escapes in the middle of the battle to think about his strategy and how he can catch
up to Katakuri.
Katakuri meanwhile starts to like Luffy and pushes him to grow stronger until he is powerful
enough to defeat him.
There is a very strong argument here whether or not Katakuri let Luffy beat him voluntarily
or not, but it is without question that Katakuri beat Luffy during the first half of the fight
and that the battle followed the same 4 stages as all the other defeats.
Luffy learns to use his devil fruit way more creatively and even gains the ability to look
slightly into the future.
But this is nothing against what Luffy learned from his battle with Kaido, one of the four
emperors, said to be the strongest creature on the planet.
Luffy’s introduction to kaido is a defeat with a single hit.
Luffy might never have been as out classed as in this fight.
He has to go on an entire training arc and escape from prison in order to take on Kaido
again.
And is still beaten a second time.
This time Luffy is saved by his devil fruit powers and his will to live.
He grows immensely as both a leader and a fighter, to the point where he emerges as
one of the strongest people in the story.
So there really aren’t too many characters left, who would have a chance of beating luffy.
This guys here however is a different story.
Blackbeard is the main antagonist of the story and will be Luffy’s biggest obstacle in
becoming pirate king.
If you want to know just how powerful he is, and why he is able to wield 2 devil fruits
at the same time you can watch this video right here next.