Aerion and Dunk remind me of Mizu vs Fowler in Blue eyed samurai. Fight wise. Aerion and Mizu are skinny yet skilled. Dunk and Fowler are built like Tanks and are Five times their opponents size. When Mizu meets Fowler for the first time, he shoots her sword apart and beats the crap out of her. Giving her no option but to flee.
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And Aerion knows that Dunk can bulldoze him without really trying. So that's why he does the Trial of Seven. But I think that if Aerion believed in himself more, he would have beaten Dunk one on one bc he was handing Dunk his arse.
Everytime he'd advance against Dunk he'd get swept off his feet by Team Duncan. That never would have happened if they were alone. When Dunk got up Aerion looked like this....
Because he knew that if Dunk recovered, he [the prince] would lose. Bc Dunk can get by on sheer size, strength power and grit. Aerion can't.
And Aerion was too tired and too exhausted to put up a decent fight. Former champ Dominick Cruz said "Tiredness will make cowards of us all" If Aerion's tired, he has no speed. No speed, equals lack of skill and he needs every trick in the book to defeat Dunk but he knows he can't do it. He's so physically exhausted that he's powerless.
You can see the exact time that hope evaporates in the princes eyes, bc he's too tired to fight off this tank, this animal that just won't stop plodding after him.
TLTR- Huge size difference. That matters. But Aerion would definitely have won in a one on one fight with Dunk,
