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hmmm with the way you have described it, i can see the difficulties sasuke would encounter against him. but if you restrict his use of bunshins and any sort of jutsu, just straight up cqc, then peak Ems sasuke would beat him since he has no diversions he can use and sasuke can easily read his movements allowing him to react. plus his movement and striking speed was good enough to push back blind senjutsu madara who in base, tossed away sm naruto and left him on his ass.
Not necessarily , restrict all jutsu and we have a guy who is vastly more skilled and naturally talented and not to mention wise , Both can and will read each others movements but this is where skills , smarts , body speed and exp come directly into play..
Itachi had a mind of a kage at 7 and was a ninja nerd who likely studied all forms of combat knowledge in oder to get stronger for peace , which explains why he was so worried about people like Gai.
His skills , intuition and Ninja movements were potrayed too far above Sasuke especially if u consider the B showings , Itachi knows wat to do while Sasuke is straight forward and very rash in battle.
Madara simply avoided and backpedaled away from Sasuke , then using precision , exp , intuition and skill , picked the perfect interval to grab the Sword and have a chat , and this was done without the aid of his sharingan which would've helped better against Sasuke's kenjutsu swipes than SM since he could precog all the movements.
So imo MS Itachi beats EMS Sasuke with no more med diff in lone CQC Also , with two Kunai i see him out-pacing Sasuke in skill , careful thinking and movements which itachi is literally always hyped for , so yea he takes his bro all the same here.
he is a very dangerous guy when he is serious. dat itachi
The guy was a true Ninja artist who could literally paint his battles to go how he wants them.
Truly one of the reasons Naruto as a seriies is so great.