Originally Posted by
Ken Cheng
I think Cheung Mo Gei probably had more raw inner power than any of the Greats from L/ROCH (but not by a whole lot...maybe at most 10% more), but he tends to perform badly in many of his fights because he's not a killer or warrior by nature (he's a physician who can fight). Moreover, Cheung Mo Gei's matchups tends to be against opponents with whom he has some kind of personal or political consideration to factor in.
Whom did Gwok Jing and Yeung Gor fight in most of their adventures? Straight up bad guys and enemies. They fought people such as Mui Chiu Fung, the Jin flunkies, Au Yeung Hak, West Poison Au Yeung Fung, Kau Cheen Yan, Lee Mok Sau, Golden Wheel Monk, the Mongol flunkies, Gung Sheun Tze, etc. These were people whom Gwok Jing and Yeung Gor had no personal or political reasons to go easy against; they were flat out enemies against whom they could always fight against to kill without any qualms.
Whom did Cheung Mo Gei often fight? People against whom there were personal or political reasons he had to hold back. He "lost" to Chow Chi Yerk because he still felt affection for her and guilt that he had abandoned her during their wedding. He didn't fight full tilt against the Persian mercenaries because they were fellow Ming Cult members. He didn't fight all-out against the three Shaolin Dao-generation elders because he respected them as wulin elders and good people, and he really didn't want to aggravate relations between the Ming Cult and Shaolin after all the work he and his Ming Cult brothers had put in to improve relations between the Ming Cult and mainstream orthodox wulin the past few years. Gwok Jing and Yeung Gor seldom had to deal with these concerns: they never had to fight against Wong Yung or Little Dragon Girl, or against the Gong Nam 7 Freaks or North Beggar Hung 7 Gung...people whom they loved and respected or had political reasons (because neither Gwok Jing nor Yeung Gor led important wulin organizations) to avoid fighting/harming.
Finally, it is my belief that Jin Yong never wanted to make the CONDOR HEROES TRILOGY Greats too far apart from each other in martial arts. The elder generation Greats remained reliably on par with each other for decades. For the younger, protagonist heroes, nobody really broke through the Level 80 ceiling, but here's how Jin Yong rather cleverly let each generation surpass the last:
The original Greats reached Level 80 when they were old men well past their sixties.
Gwok Jing reached Level 80 when he was a middle-aged man in this forties or fifties.
Yeung Gor reached Level 80 when he was still a fairly young man in his mid-to-late thirties.
Cheung Mo Gei reached Level 80 when he was still a very young man in his early to mid-twenties.
So if you want to reckon it this way, with each succeeding generation being better than the last by reaching Level 80 earlier in life, I'll support you there. I don't, however, support any proposition that any CONDOR HEROES TRILOGY Great was head and shoulders ahead of the rest.