15 Best Fighters in Avatar: The Last Airbender & The Legend of Korra, Ranked (2024)

Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra depict bending as an art form beyond just combat, but there's no denying the power it adds to the characters' fighting abilities. Throughout both series, the heroes and villains alike engage in battles that demonstrate their skills. Some characters rely entirely on natural talent, while others train hard to become expert fighters in their chosen styles.

The strongest characters and most skilled fighters are not always the same, though there may be some overlap. To be a true fighter and not just a bender, the characters in Avatar and Korra must prove through a combination of sheer power and adaptive thinking that they have what it takes to come out on top. Though this type of thing can be subjective and hard to quantify, there are certain characteristics of the fighters in these series that allow some to stand above the rest.

Updated on October 31, 2024 by Lauren Younkin: Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra boast a variety of skilled benders and non-benders. As such, this list has been updated to include even more of the best fighters from these series, and to comply with CBR's current standards of formatting.

15 Ty Lee Can Shut Down Benders With Her Bare Hands

Ty Lee is one of the most formidable non-benders in Avatar: The Last Airbender, using her unique chi blocking martial arts style to prevent her enemies from accessing their bending abilities. In one of her first appearances, Ty Lee blocks Katara's chi during a battle in Omashu, rendering Katara helpless without her control over water. Though this effect is only temporary, it's enough to turn the tide in any fight.

Ty Lee lacks the hitting power of Avatar's other characters, and she doesn't have any special weapons to finish off her foes. But if her team needs to quickly knock enemies out of commission, then Ty Lee is the one for the job. As an acrobat, Ty Lee is agile and quick on her feet, able to move in ways most foes wouldn't expect. However, as a non-bender, there's only so much that she can do other than level the playing field.

Lin is the head of police in Republic City, as well as the daughter of legendary earthbender Toph Beifong. She is most adept in the practice of metalbending, a subset of earthbending that her mother invented. Her position within the police force was also inherited from her mother, although the two would later go on to have a strained relationship and cut off contact with each other.

Lin initially comes across as fierce and intimidating when Korra first meets her, and her bending style reflects this. She prefers to brute-force her way through situations on her strength alone, and although this mostly works in her favor it sometimes proves to be costly, as shown when she is taken down by the Equalists and loses her bending at the hands of Amon. Thankfully, Korra is able to restore her bending so that Lin may continue to use it to help people.

13 Iroh Is the Dragon of the West

Though Iroh often uses wise words to make peace, he is no stranger to conflict. Once a famed military general in the Fire Nation army, Iroh seiged the Earth Kingdom city of Ba Sing Se for many days and likely would have broken through the wall if not for the death of his son. This caused Iroh to reevaluate his life and resign from his position to focus on what was important to him.

He is also famed for his title of "Dragon of the West," which is at first explained as a firebending move that Iroh can do by spitting a torrent of fire from his mouth. What it actually means in the Fire Nation is that Iroh won the title by conquering a dragon, though it is later revealed in "The Firebending Masters" that he only told people he did this to protect the last remaining dragons. Regardless, when the time comes to live up to his many titles during Sozin's Comet, Iroh proves his exceptional skill by finally liberating Ba Sing Se with the rest of the White Lotus.

12 Tenzin Studied Airbending For Years With His Father Aang

As the only airbender son of Avatar Aang, Tenzin received a great deal of training and attention from his father. It paid off, with Tenzin growing up to become a master airbender. For a time, he was the world's only airbending master after his father's death, making him a key player in the rebirth of the Air Nomad civilization in The Legend of Korra Book Three: Change.

Tenzin may not like fighting, but if anyone threatens the peace, he will not hesitate to help where he is needed. He practices a style of airbending that focuses on creative, quick-thinking moves like his father before him. He demonstrated these remarkable skills when he took on Zaheer at the Northern Air Temple in an air duel, though Tenzin lacked Zaheer's acrobatic skills and killer instinct.

11 Pakku Is the Northern Water Tribe's Number One Bender

Pakku is the first waterbending master fans meet in Avatar: The Last Airbender. He is chosen to be the Avatar's waterbending instructor over anyone else in the Northern Water Tribe, which is implication enough of how powerful he is. Unfortunately, Pakku also represents the rigid traditions of the Northern Water Tribe, meaning that he is plenty willing to teach Aang but not Katara.

Pakku gets the chance to demonstrate his own elite skills when Katara challenges him to a waterbending duel. Even though Katara was a powerful waterbender by that point, she was still self-taught, and Pakku had decades of practice and experience on his side. He also winds up being a member of the White Lotus, which boasts several powerful old masters in their respective fields, once again showing how accomplished he is.

10 Bumi Took Back the City of Omashu Single-Handedly

Despite being 112 years old, King Bumi is in excellent shape and capable of throwing down with younger fighters. This is a fact he hides from Aang when they meet again for the first time, fooling him into thinking that Bumi is weak and then turning the tables on him. Aang initially wants Bumi to be his earthbending master, and even though Bumi knows he is not what Aang needs, it is not because he is any less capable.

When Bumi first surrenders Omashu to the Fire Nation, Team Avatar is completely shocked because they know his true strength. This is when Bumi demonstrates his aptitude for strategy, however, and he waits patiently for the perfect opportunity that the eclipse provides before taking back his city single-handedly in an impressive display of earthbending power. Like Iroh and Pakku, Bumi is a member of the White Lotus and thus certified as a true master.

Lin Beifong's younger half-sister Suyin may not have gotten training as a Republic City metalbender cop, but Suyin did tour the world to learn new things, which she later incorporated into her metalbending. By the time Korra meets her, Suyin Beifong is a highly proficient earthbender, metalbender, and dancer.

Suyin elegantly uses bending with a dancer's grace to avoid enemy attacks and stay light on her feet, which sets her apart from typical earthbenders. Though she and Lin can rival each other in metalbending, Suyin possesses a mastery of technique that Lin lacks, capable of creating precise and intricate works with metal. Suyin prefers to use her advanced skills for peaceful pursuits, however, such as performances in Zaofu to delight and entertain her people.

8 Katara Utilizes Multiple Waterbending Techniques

Katara goes on an incredible journey of growth throughout Avatar: The Last Airbender. In the first episode, she's struggling to accomplish even the most basic of waterbending moves, and by the final episode she's helping Zuko take down Azula. Aside from waterbending, Katara picks up two other skills while they're traveling: healing and bloodbending.

The bloodbending technique that Katara learns from Hama makes her particularly deadly, able to control people's bodies from the inside out. She only uses it one other time after learning it when she confronts her mother's killer in "The Southern Raiders," and its thanks to her strong morals that she never unleashes it on anyone again. Were it not for Katara being horrified at even learning the technique in the first place, she would be almost unbeatable in a fight.

7 Princess Azula Has Enormous Talent and Skill

Princess Azula was born with immense talent as a firebender with blue flames, but she didn't coast on those natural gifts. Her father Ozai expected a lot from her, so Azula trained hard with the Fire Nation's best to maximize her potential. She also inherited the ability to bend lightning from her father, something she doesn't hesitate to use when the moment calls for it.

Azula starts the series as a perfectionist, never one to have a hair out of place, and that comes through in the way she fights. She is very precise in both her bending and her planning, and it is well-known that she will not tolerate being crossed. The result of this is that she is able to control people through fear without having to lift a finger most of the time. Only at the end of the series does Azula unravel as a fighter, becoming sloppy as she realizes that everyone has abandoned her.

6 Zaheer Was Nearly Untouchable in Battle With His Airbending

Zaheer was a dangerous anarchist during his heyday – an acrobatic and a skilled fighter who could easily destabilize entire nations with the Red Lotus' aid. After he gained the ability to airbend, Zaheer became even more formidable, having lost none of his earlier skills as a fighter. He has killer instincts and a cunning mindset, making him a deadly fighter with or without bending.

This all makes Zaheer incredibly dangerous despite the brief time he had to train as a newly minted airbender, and he was able to keep pace with a genuine master like Tenzin in battle. His ruthlessness comes through in the creative ways he learns to use his airbending, most notably when he kills the Earth Queen by suffocating her. He even learns how to fly, a feat that only one other airbender has ever achieved.

Kuvira made her first appearance in The Legend of Korra Book Three: Change, but she did not demonstrate her skill in metalbending until she became the primary antagonist of Book Four: Balance. By then, Kuvira had perfected her metalbending, using military precision and efficiency to get maximum results from remarkably little effort in battle.

Kuvira can easily restrain enemy benders with the metal strips on her uniform, binding her opponent's ankles and wrists to render them helpless. Just as any form of bending is not inherently good or evil, Kuvira took these metalbending practices from a city that was built to help people and instead used them to harm. She also created a giant metal mecha for herself called the Colossus, and with the spirit energy cannon attached to it, she wielded immense power.

4 Amon Can Take People's Bending Away

As the first villain of The Legend of Korra, Amon made quite an impression. Like Ty Lee, Amon possesses the power to block people's bending abilities, only this time it's permanent. He initially markets himself to the people of Republic City as a non-bender in order to start the Equalist movement, but it turns out that he is actually a waterbender from the Northern Water Tribe.

His chi-blocking abilities that he uses to permanently strip people of their bending are actually the result of bloodbending, something Amon is exceptionally skilled at. Going even further than the techniques that Katara learned, Amon can bloodbend simply by using his mind. His power was so great that Korra feared him, and at one point he even cut off the Avatar cycle by taking most of her bending away. No one ever managed to defeat him in a fight, and in the end he allowed his death at the hands of his brother.

Toph Beifong proves time and time again in Avatar why she is the number one earthbender in the world. She refuses to let her disability weaken her and instead uses it to her advantage, learning from the badger-moles to sense vibrations in the earth around her through her feet. She can even use this ability to detect when someone is lying. While most people, including her parents, look at her and only see a helpless little girl, Toph is quick to turn these perceptions around.

Her great skill is recognized by the spirits, who direct Aang to her so she can be the Avatar's teacher in earthbending. Toph's particular method of seismic sense even saves Aang on occasion, such as in his final fight with Ozai. Her deep connection to the earth is what leads her to discover the potential for metalbending when forced into a situation where she has to be creative. Her legacy would go on to create change in the world and influence earthbending forever.

2 Korra Is the Avatar of a New Generation

Merely by virtue of being the Avatar, Korra is destined to have extreme power. But Korra also exhibited a unique aptitude for bending by learning three elements all while she was a child. Trained by the White Lotus at her home in the Southern Water Tribe, it wasn't until she visited Republic City to meet Tenzin that she started to learn airbending and realized it wouldn't come as easy to her as the other three.

Korra is a unique Avatar in many ways. She didn't go on the traditional Avatar journey of learning each element in its home region, and thus she was very sheltered from the world. This made her good at fighting in a controlled environment, but lacking in practical application. Korra is forced to quickly acclimatize to the rest of the world when multiple threats appear to destabilize the hard-won peace, and it is only her penchant for adaptability that allows her to grow into her status as the Avatar.

1 Avatar Aang Masters All Four Elements To Win the War

Though Aang never wanted to be the Avatar, he became the one the world truly needed. He embarks on a quest to learn the next three elements after waking from his hundred-year slumber, and while it proves to be a challenge, he manages to do it within the time limit put upon him. As he learns new elements, Aang finds creative ways to combine them in battle, wisely using the fundamentals of each style.

Even without the Avatar State, Aang is a truly accomplished bender. Ironically, as someone raised by the airbenders with pacifistic tendencies, he does everything he can to avoid a fight. His bending style is more evasive than offensive, earning him the nickname "Twinkle Toes" from Toph. However, Aang's true power lies in his moral resilience. He intentionally restricts himself by not taking fatal action against his enemies, such as Fire Lord Ozai, but Aang still manages to find ways to be victorious in spite of this.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

In a war-torn world of elemental magic, a young boy reawakens to undertake a dangerous mystic quest to fulfill his destiny as the Avatar, and bring peace to the world.

The Legend of Korra

Avatar Korra fights to keep Republic City safe from the evil forces of both the physical and spiritual worlds.