Tropes A to B (Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole, Arc Villain, Berserk Button, Beware the Silly One, Big Brother Instinct, Bowdlerise, Break the Cutie) | Tropes C to D (Call-Back, Chekhov's Gun, Cliffhanger, Combat Pragmatist, Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass, Curb-Stomp Battle, Dark and Troubled Past, Deconstructed Character Archetype) | Tropes E to F (Early Installment Weirdness, Famous Last Words, Foreshadowing) | Tropes G to J (Heart is an Awesome Power, Hypocrite) | Tropes K to M (Laser-Guided Karma, Logical Weakness, Mass "Oh, Crap!", Moral Myopia, Muscles Are Meaningless) | Tropes N to P (Nice Job Fixing It, Villain, Oh, Crap!, O.O.C. Is Serious Business) | Tropes Q to S (The Reveal, Shout-Out, Spanner in the Works, Superpower Lottery) | Tropes T to Z (Wham Episode, Wham Line)
One Piece has a lot of Curb-Stomp Battles to demonstrate the sheer power gap between the Straw Hats and their enemies as they advance up the Grand Line (and vice-versa).
- The definitive example is Luffy vs. Bellamy, a match so one-sided that it's like watching a fight between a lion and a deer. Luffy initially refused to fight Bellamy, out of a desire not to cause trouble. Then Bellamy learned of Luffy's bounty, and assumed it was fake like an idiot. Then he stole from Luffy's friends. Luffy one-shotted his sorry ass.
- With a single, unstretched punch, we might add; Bellamy showed off his Devil Fruit powers throughout the whole "fight", but he never found out that Luffy even had a Devil Fruit power.
- His later fight with Bellamy in Dressrosa also is this. Despite not wanting to hurt Bellamy due to seeing him as a friend, Luffy initially doesn't attack him as he tries to make him see that Doflamingo is an evil man. Only after realizing that Bellamy still respects the guy despite everything he does to him does Luffy knock out Bellamy again with a single punch as a mark of respect.
- Zoro vs. Mihawk. It was pretty much a given, though he displayed enough spirit to earn the Warlord's respect... which is a feat in and of itself, as Mihawk hasn't been shown to respect anyone else that is incapable of going toe-to-toe with him.
- The earliest example was Luffy vs. Alvida, which consisted of Luffy letting her hit him with her mace to no effect and then taking her down in one blow. Second was Luffy vs. Ax-Hand Morgan, during which Luffy effortlessly dodged his attacks before striking him down.
- During the Whiskey Peak arc, Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine do this to Mr. 8 (Igaram), Mr. 9, and Miss Monday without even trying. Shortly afterwards, they themselves are beaten in this manner by Luffy and Zoro, who weren't even interested in fighting them because they were fighting each other.
- Usopp vs. Mr. 2 Bon Clay, which ended so quickly it was never even shown. According to Usopp, it took two seconds: one second to beat him, one second to beat Eyelashes the camel.
- Luffy's first fight against Crocodile, Crocodile just stood still for three minutes letting Luffy punch him, and after those three minutes were up, impaled him.
- Wyper vs. Shura during the Ordeal of String in Skypiea. Wyper tanked Shura's Heat Javelin and immediately took the priest out with a Reject Dial.
- Luffy, Zoro, Sanji, and Chopper going to get revenge on the Franky Family (minus Franky himself, who had already left) for mugging Usopp. The four are outnumbered about thirty to one, but none of the Franky Family members are able to land even a single hit on any of them. They're effortlessly walloped and then their house is razed to the ground for good measure.
- Sanji vs. Wanze is an interesting case. Both are Chefs of Iron, but while the former is a type 1 who only uses kicks, the latter is a type 3 who uses Ramen Kenpo. Wanze has Sanji on the receiving end of this for the first half of their fight, and in order to turn the tables, Sanji has to temporarily change into a type 2, and Wanze is on the receiving end from then on.
- Luffy's rematch with Blueno at Enies Lobby. Once the Straw Hat Captain busts out Gear Second, the poor CP9 agent gets thrashed.
- Sanji vs. Kalifa. Admittedly, Sanji suffers from a severe case of Wouldn't Hit a Girl. And boy, does that trope get Deconstructed with Kalifa beating the ever loving snot out of him.
- And the silly thing is, if that wasn't the case, he would've easily beat her too, as he outmatched her in speed and strength.
- Kumadori's fight with Chopper was this in all respects. Chopper had to go all out, pushing his Multiform Balance to the limit, and even then Kumadori hardly even faltered. Fueled with the thoughts of what he was fighting for, Chopper unleashed his berserker Monster Point. Kumadori was no longer able to faze him, and the fight ended with Chopper grabbing his head and flinging him to the other side of the island.
- Zoro vs T-Bone. Beyond some words acknowledging the Marine's dedication, T-Bone didn't even slow Zoro down.
- Nico Robin vs. Tashigi... and Pell... and Yama... and especially Spandam... Yeah, in general, it's an extremely bad idea to try and fight Nico Robin unless you outclass her by a wide margin.
- For the most part, Tashigi is victimized by this trope; she's a skilled swordsman, albeit clumsy, and post-Time Skip has done enough training to become superhumanly strong and fast. But both before and after said training, she has a habit of picking fights with those that she cannot defeat, such as Robin, Zoro, Trafalgar Law, and Monet.
- When Enel fights anyone who isn't Luffy, it tends to turn into this, though Wyper made a creditable attempt.
- On a similar note, Boa Sandersonia and Boa Marigold almost did this to Luffy... until he stopped holding back, at which point they didn't have a prayer of winning.
- Pretty much any time "Dark King" Silvers Rayleigh shows up, if you're beneath the Admirals in power, then you better prepare to get wrecked. In his first appearance, he uses Haki to drop Disco, who was beating on Camie while imprisoned. Then, he follows it up by casually dropping pretty much everyone but the Eleven Supernovas and their crews in a crowded Slave Shop with Haki. And Post-timeskip, when the Straw Hats are escaping from the Marines who'd showed up due to the Impostor's recruiting, he draws a line in the dirt and tells them they're not crossing it. They don't.
- The end of the Sabaody Arc can be summed up as "Admiral Kizaru wipes out half of the Supernovas without even trying". Only Rayleigh was able to hold him off.
- Anything involving Chief Warden Magellan of Impel Down. Fighting Luffy? Matter of minutes. Facing the thousand-strong army of criminals? The army runs away. The series' Big Bad and his crew? Matter of seconds. It should be mentioned that his power is generating vast amounts of poison, which Heroic Resolve does little to help against.
- Of course, that doesn't mean Magellan is immune to being on the receiving end. After Blackbeard broke into Level 6 and freed multiple prisoners, the ones he didn't recruit rampaged through Impel Down and beat Magellan near death.
- Luffy pulls another against Coby during Marineford. It looks like his Training from Hell would pay off, and he'd be able to a least slow down Luffy's Foe-Tossing Charge. He uses Soru to get close and eats a Gum-Gum Bullet to the face before he's even finished moving. Luffy gave him no acknowledgment beyond saying his name.
- Luffy vs. Vice Admiral Garp, finished off in one blow. Though it's obvious Garp threw the fight.
- Whitebeard hands these out like candy during the Marineford war. Mook army? Literally sent flying in one swing. Sneak attack by a giant Vice Admiral? Whitebeard parries his axe with his fist and beats him with one hand in less than thirty seconds. Admiral Akainu tries to get involved? He eats a Facepalm of Doom and gets incapacitated for a good while. Blackbeard comes in and neutralizes his overpowered Devil Fruit with a grab? Whitebeard personally beats the fuck out of him with just raw strength. Even in his old, decayed state, the Marines lose a ton of battles and only barely win the war.
- Sanji gets owned by Okama Queen Ivankov in less than a panel while trying to steal a ship.
- A series of curb-stomps are the fights involving the Impostor Straw Hats. The first one featured the fake Luffy, Nami, and Sogeking threatening the real Nami (who they hadn't recognized) only to get casually defeated by Usopp and then zapped by Nami. Then Fake Luffy and most of his gang picked a fight with the real Luffy (who at least was wearing a Paper-Thin Disguise), only to get knocked out by a burst of Haki. Finally, there's the one between the Impostors and their recruits and the Marines, who had come to catch Luffy because they had heard of the Impostors recruiting and, believing them the real deal, had brought three times the amount of force they had needed to match the real ones pre-timeskip: Science Captain Sentomaru (who, pre-timeskip, could match the entire crew alone) mauled Fake Luffy, called him trash and an idiot for faking to be Luffy without expecting the Marines to come, and then had a Pacifista reveal his true identity (that being "Triple-Tongued" Demaro Black) to everyone present while calling the recruits idiots for buying the lie.
- Caribou, who, after meeting the real Straw Hats, is consistently curb-stomped. The first time it was Luffy, then it was Pekoms, and then, in a mini-series, Jimbei and X-Drake. This is the part where it becomes pretty clear that he has no chance of even lasting a week in the New World.
- Post-timeskip, damn! Pacifista vs. Straw Hats rematch. The last time the Straw Hats fought these beasts, it took all nine of them working together just to stop one. This time? Luffy one-shots the first. Sanji and Zoro each one-shot the second at the same time. It wouldn't have taken their attacks individually either, they were just trying to one-up each other.
- The post-timeskip Zoro vs. Hody Jones the Fish-Man, Big Bad of the Fish-Man Island Arc. Zoro won. With ONE HIT. UNDERWATER. (Which is pretty shameful, considering that's where Fish-Men are at their strongest.)
- And then Luffy vs. Hody Jones, first on dry land, then underwater. Luffy basically trounces Hody without any real effort. When the fight moves underwater, Luffy has a slight disadvantage because of the Devil Fruit's weakness in water, but he still pounds Hody every time the Fishman gets near him. Hody gets ONE hit in, and still gets sent flying.
- Straw Hats and Jimbei vs. Hody's New Fish-Man Pirates. Complete and total beatdown. Of the 100,000-strong crew, Luffy wipes out half of them with one burst of Haki as the opening volley. And it only gets worse for the poor saps from there.
- During the same battle all of Hody's top henchmen are beaten effortlessly (emphasis on effortlessly) by the Straw Hats.
- Probably the most hilarious is Hammond vs. Robin. The former had already experienced one at the hands of Luffy, who just one-shotted him without much effort. When he reappears, he's still recovering with bandages all over his body and wearing a neckbrace. Robin frees the slaves that were carrying him as his "human tank" who toss his ass to the ground. He then decides to pick a fight with Robin by shooting a net at her. Turns out that Robin isn't the real one, as she's now honed her Devil Fruit powers to the point where she can clone herself. Not only that, but she makes a copy of herself to bind his neck while she binds his legs and twists his spine at both ends. Ouch.
- Chronologically, in the (ambiguously canon) manga adaptation of One Piece Novel A, Hammond picks a fight with Ace. Ace only needed Haoshoku Haki to drop him down. And even after three years he didn't learn anything from that when Luffy used his own Haki!
- This seems to be the norm for Trafalgar Law and Vice-Admiral Vergo. The first time that they met, Vergo used his Haki to armor up his entire body and handed him such a brutal beating that it left Law both traumatized and terrified of Vergo...or so Doflamingo believed, as Law was just a child at the time. Post-Time Skip, it at first seems that the situation has not changed, especially when Vergo is in possession of Law's heart. However, once Smoker got Law his heart back, Law manages to beat Vergo in that same form with one blow.
- In Chapter 687, Zoro defeats Monet in a single blow, and he was not even using his full strength. In fact, the latter loses from the sheer terror of realising that she would have died had he used his full powers. Well, that and Tashigi dealing the finishing blow.
- "Lucy" vs. Spartan. Not even five chapters into the Dressrosa arc and already Luffy handed somebody their ass.
- The entirety of Block A in the Corrida Colosseum is this. Over 130 competitors defeated effortlessly by a masked character. After he wins, he removes the mask to reveal his identity: Jesus Burgess, one of Blackbeard's top men.
- Block D finishes with this. Cavendish is a One-Man Army on his own, but his Superpowered Evil Side Hakuba is even more so; all of the remaining members of Block D, who are varying degrees of One-Man Army, are taken down effortlessly in the scarce few seconds that Hakuba has control... except Rebecca, who was just fast enough to avoid being struck unconscious, though even she wasn't fast enough to completely evade Hakuba.
- Sabo effortlessly (and we mean effortlessly) defeats Vice-Admiral Bastille.
- Chapters 770-774 involved several of Doflamingo's officers dishing out and receiving curb-stomp battles. To elaborate:
- 770: Machvise vs Hajrudin: Hajrudin one-shotted him with Gungnir, knocking his fat ass right into the birdcage. This was after suffering a beatdown from Machvise AND while he weighed 10,000 tons (the same as the 2013 meteor that hit Russia). Talk about willpower.
- 771: Lao G pretty much beat Chinjao without taking any damage. Chinjao later got his drill bent sideways by Sai before being one-shotted by Lao G. Don Sai later returns the favor, downing Lao G while the latter is in Jio-Ken with the very kick used to bend his grandfather's drill. He later "defeated" Baby 5 with a marriage proposal.
- 772: Dellinger brutally defeats Ideo with his incredible speed. Dellinger later gets dropped in one hit by the even faster Hakuba.
- 773: Bartolomeo vs. Gladius involved both parties getting curbstomped. Bartolomeo gets shot by poisonous needles and later blown up while trying to protect Robin. After Robin escapes, Bartolomeo clobbers Gladius with Homage Holy Fist: Barrier-Barrier Pistol.
- 774: Leo pulls a Big Damn Heroes and makes short work of Giolla, using his Devil Fruit powers to stitch her to multiple unconscious Donquixote Pirate Mooks and officers (one of them Machvise), crushing her under their combined weight.
- 776: Kyros only struggled against Diamante because he was trying to keep Rebecca safe. Once she is safe, however, nothing stopped Kyros (not even a rain of spiky balls) from getting in range of and cutting down Diamante with one strike.
- Chapter 784 gives us a visual echo of when Luffy fought Blueno in the Enies Lobby arc. Seriously, it's a perfect echo: Luffy faces an arrogant antagonist, overly confident in his own superhuman strength, which was previously demonstrated by putting Luffy on the receiving end of this trope the first time that they fought. The rematch goes on in a stalemate for a short while. And then Luffy unleashes a new Gear technique, and suddenly the super powerful antagonist is getting tossed around like a bloody rag doll. What's even more surprising is that this antagonist is Donquixote Doflamingo.
- Chapter 821: Jack "the Drought" and an entire fleet of Beasts pirates vs. Zunesha the Country-sized Elephant. Sure, it looked dangerous for a moment as their cannons actually stung through the elephant's skin, but then Jack and the fleet are utterly screwed the moment Zunesha is even allowed to fight back. Lesson to be learned: Even if you're one of the most powerful men alive, picking a fight with a creature whose size is best measured in miles is a bad idea.
- Chapter 923: Luffy unleashes a powerful and extremely angry barrage of Gear Fourth attacks on Kaido, straight to his head. He looks annoyed at best. Then Kaido decks Luffy with his mace once and he's immediately KO'd and left looking like an entire army had taken turns stomping him.
- Chapter 946: As a way to properly outline the difference between an Emperor's direct subordinate and an actual Emperor, we have Queen the Plague vs Big Mom, as the latter wanted to eat all the former's oshiruko and he's upset enough at the possibility he throws caution and reason to the wind. All Queen gets to do is use his Fruit power to transform into a gigantic brachiosaurus; Big Mom's reaction is to just bitch-slap his head into the ground then throw him into the nearest wall, taking him down in seconds.
- Chapter 1044: It seems like Kaido has won against Luffy again, knocking him out cold with his mace...then Luffy regains consciousness, awakens his Devil Fruit - which is actually the Human-Human Fruit, Model: Nika, a Mythical Zoan type - and activates Gear FIFTH. Cue the World's Strongest Creature being casually man-mashed Hulk-to-Loki style and rendered powerless to do anything against Luffy's new form.
- Shanks vs Admiral Ryokugyu. Shanks paralyzes the Admiral with a burst of Conqueror's Haki from miles away while telepathically warning him to leave this new era of pirates alone. Ryokugyu takes his advice.
- Chapter 1079 sees Shanks engage in his first proper fight in 25 years, but the battle that ensues can hardly be called as such. When Eustass Kidd shows up in Elbaf and challenges Shanks, the Red Hair Pirates' captain uses Observation Haki to see that Kidd would take several members of Shanks' fleet with a Damned Punk, so he promptly takes both him and Killer out with a single Divine Departure, knocking both of them out of the fight before they even had a chance to react. Adding insult to injury, he then has the two giants Dorry and Broggy sink their ship.
- The Marines vs. the former Warlords. In short, the Marines fail to capture the Warlords (with the sole exception being Weevil, and even then, Admiral Ryokugyu's presence was necessary to capture him). Hancock in particular petrifies both the Marines and the concurrently-attacking Blackbeard Pirates save for Coby and Blackbeard himself.
- Luffy and Lucci's rematch at Egghead. While Lucci has clearly improved his techniques since the last time he fought Luffy, his improvement pales before Luffy's and he gets bested once again with little issue.
