Who is stronger, Cloud or Zack?

[Mercen-X]

Zack FF VII " Sephiroth is really awesome and I'm his biggest fan " ! " Oh whoops a Nibelheim Dragon defeated me, but that's okay " !

That's... not a fabricated memory. The stuff you see in the Lifestream (once Tifa stops cutting in with corrections anyway) is accurate, i.e. Zack runs into the Jenova chamber and comes flying out like a bitch five seconds later. The whole point of that entire section is that by this time Cloud starts telling the truth.

Actually, it is a fabricated memory. When Cloud recounts the Nibelheim events in Kalm, he's not remembering events properly. Yes, he mostly injects himself where Zack should be, but that's not a guarantee that each case is like this. Do you really think that with a truck full of Shinra MPs that only Sephiroth and Zack would have gotten out to face that dragon? Cloud being easily pwned isn't a reflection of Zack's statistics at the time of the Nibel events. It's a reflection of how Cloud honestly saw himself in comparison to Sephiroth. And "five seconds later" is just you misinterpreting the passage of time as represented in the Lifestream. Cloud was not present to see Zack fall and Tifa was unconscious. It could very well have been 15-20 minutes before Cloud arrived... by the way, let's not forget, Cloud only "defeated" Sephiroth because he took him by surprise.