Cloud never fought any gods. The only thing resembling a god in VII would be Omega Weapon and that's Chaos Vincent's territory.

But it doesn't matter. Power is quite irrelevant. Cloud is nothing like Lightning and he never has been. They just want to try and make Lightning "iconic" and the only way the dunderheads at Square can think to achieve this is to shove her in our faces as much as they can.

Cloud became more famous than Lightning with just one gme. Why? Because his game was actually good.