Except that he is, because the statement clearly says that Piccolo can't even hold his own against them, so such backscaling doesn't work when it's based on nothing more than visuals while you ignore the statement in the first place
"Hold your own" means fighting on par with someone, retaining a position of strength or
being as successful. If you're outclassed, you're not holding your own, but it doesn't mean you're vastly inferior.
Nobody is ignoring the statement. It's just not relevant.
The Cell Jrs. did not want to kill the Z fighters before. They literally just played around with them before, and Piccolo was still getting a lot of damage from them despite them not even being serious
By playing, you mean knocking them out in 5 seconds and breaking bones. They'd have done this to the rest if they could, but they didn't because they're not strong enough.
He didn't get a lot of damage, no more than Vegeta and Trunks in fact. That's the entire point.
The battle itself was never really shown, so saying that he was holding his own despite having no feats to show this and with Cell directly confirming against it, he doesn't scale regardless of regeneration
But the damage is. Also, we see scenes of the fight, and he's never grossly outclassed at any point, unlike the humans. What you're doing is making an interpretation of a statement that favours you.
Again, I never said he was. Piccolo scales to his own durability, and he can fight people capable of harming him.
Honestly, if you want to go down this route, the Cell Jrs can also regenerate and were confirmed to have Cell's abilites as far back as the release of Daizenshuu. And we see them with less damage each scene, so I'd say it's not unlikely they healed.
Being able to damage someone =/= being stronger than said
I'm saying they're equal because the
Cell Jr and Vegeta took about the same amount of damage from each other's punches. Nobody here suggested they're stronger.
Being able to damage someone =/= being stronger than said someone. Goku damaged Frieza when he bit his tail despite Frieza being leagues stronger than Goku. SSB Goku was weaker than Golden Frieza but still damaged him. Android 17 could damage Jiren despite him not being as strong as him and there are many more example
That's because Frieza was holding back to Goku's level. When he half-stopped, a 20x Kaioken only singed his hand.
Barely, and after he began to weaken. Plus, anime GS wasn't using his full power at first.
On two occasions, one of which being a suicide attack, the other taking him off guard. None of those criteria are met when Vegeta damages the Cell Jr.