Well lets think about this rationally. Hashirama suppressed the 9-tails, it was sealed into Mito and is no longer a factor. Hashi is perfect for sealing tailed beasts. Madara only had the EMS, and hasn't been shown to be all that smart, more brawn then brains.i agree with the hashirama n bijuu thing said ^^^ there
but hashirama owns nagato (i'm a nagato/pein fan but i gotta accept this)
not much info about hashirama but u dont just become a hokage n also defeat madara+kyuubi...not to mention largest chakra also belongs to him
Nagato can absorb any chakra based attack. He can levitate, he can destroy an entire village in one move, he can repel things with gravity, or more importantly bring something to him. He can steal souls, turn his skin into metals and grow weird robot weapons out of his body, he can summon a seemingly endless number of summons, he can bring people back to life, etc.
And that isn't even counting all of the normal abilities he has that are non-rinnegan related, because remember he was training with Jiraiya before he awakened his rinnegan for real. (He did it once to avenge his parents but it didn't stay on for some reason.)