John should be nowhere near the "strongest" list, as shown even on his profile he's lost fights to unarmed 10-B pretty routinely and basically all of his impressive victories come from exploiting character flaws, pulling at the right threads and generally knowing how to put himself in the right place at the right time, not things viable for combat (even his prep mainly relies on the aforementioned stuff over Batman-style "i just have this really strong tool i can whip out whenever"). Just how defenseless he is in a scrap varies (sometimes he's been able to use magic in self-defense and there's an argument for 10-A or even 9-C) but all things considered running up to him and beating him up is typically the least danger you'll ever be in if you're anywhere near Constantine
(I don't mean "if you're fighting him", I'm pretty sure just being his friend canonically has higher odds of getting you killed).
Also he's a smurf even without the matches, I think Synchronicity is like 1-B or something
Reasoning for talking out of battle and gg:
John Constantine usually solves his complications via talking his way outta them, and is used to going out fine while messing with higher entities capable of stuff like Plot Manip and etc.
So everything implies that it is very likely for the battle to look like Obi-Wan Kenobi vs. Traffic Stormtrooper, though through sheer talking.
This is a reductive way to look at "Social Influencing" as a skill, like it's a universally applicable superpower that you can just throw at any opponent with invariable levels of success. The concept that convincing a more powerful entity is somehow more difficult is wrong (sure they exist on a higher level of intellect but they're written to be human-like in reasoning) and people like Nergal or the First of the Fallen had flaws such as pride, arrogance and wrathfulness that he was capable of exploiting just as easily as he would if they'd been normal humans, and indeed ordinary people have on occasion defeated or outsmarted him just because he didn't see it coming, made the wrong move or even just because there wasn't really any feasible way to manipulate them. He didn't just say words good and make them change their minds, he set things up so they wouldn't really have a choice (I.E: Selling his soul to the three lords of Hell so that if any of them were to actually claim it they'd be honor-bound to go to war, which none of them wanted). He can't just go "HEY DON'T FIGHT ME DON'T FIGHT ME" and have it be much more effective than if a normal person said it.
Ultimately John is amazing at bluffing, at figuring out what type of person you are and capitalizing on that, at knowing how his reputation is going to affect people and a hundred different things, but you still have to choose to engage in conversation with him rather than just sock him in the face, it's not magic.
I mean it literally might be but shush.
John's one actually useful tool in direct combat is Synchronicity, but even that sort of just subtly pokes things along to make it so they'll go right for John. In a straight fight I'm not sure it could just help things along (again, he's been knocked out by regular people). It might counter his Plot Manipulation though.
I don't have an opinion on the match, the other guy's profile isn't great and I don't know his wincons, but I thought I should correct some of the claims here.
