Gladiator

Gladiator – and let’s point out right away that this isn’t referring to the lame Daredevil villain of the same name – is a member of the Strontian species, the Sh’iar Empire and the former leader of the Imperial Guard.

In terms of his powers and abilities, he boasts almost exactly the same selection as Superman – but the difference is that his are on a more impressive scale.

 

Take his superhuman strength, for example – Gladiator regularly lifts large buildings and ships and so forth, but he has also used his physical strength alone to shatter whole planets.

In terms of his physical durability, he has flown through stars unscathed and oblivious to the “raging nuclear inferno” that engulfed him (including through one star that was one hundred million miles wide) and he has withstood explosions with forces equivalent to a supernova.

Speed-wise, his flight speed has been measured at warp-speed or “one hundred times the speed of light”, he has grabbed super-fast opponents (Image Comics’ Supreme, for instance) and flown them into space before they even knew anything had happened and he has blitzed Thor at such speed that the Asgardian didn’t know what had hit him and couldn’t retaliate.

 

Other powers he has that mirror Superman’s include his freeze breath and his heat vision. His heat vision in particular is superior, as it has been described as “hotter than a star”.

In conclusion, Superman is essentially Gladiator-lite. The only factor that might work against Gladiator is that his power fluctuates with his confidence. However, assuming he isn’t depressed and down at the time of the fight, he would destroy Superman in straight-up physical combat and, if his mindset was particularly positive at the time, there could be no telling what the limits of his physical abilities were.