[Haak]

Originally Posted by Sabaku Kyu

Only Stark was truly defeated by a single captain (though Stark actually faced a grand total of 4 captain-level opponents in close combat and held his own). You can count Halibel too if you consider being temporarily trapped a "defeat" and Ulq if you consider Ichigonator to be merely captain-level.

First of all most of the Espada were Vasto Lorde. Since most generally means more than half I think it's safe to assume that all Espada with at least a rank 6 and above were Vasto Lorde (if we don't count Yammy). That means the vasto Lorde were Grimmjow (defeated by a single captain), Luppi (defeated by a single captain and the fact that he was killed by Grimmjow so easily only makes things more confusing really), Nnoitra (killed by a single captain), Ulquiorra (Ichigonator doesn't count so I'll give you that), Hallibel (defeated by a single cpatin - the only reason she was released was because of Wonderweiss so yes that counts as a defeat), Barragan (admittedly was stroger than a captain) and Stark (the fact that he held his own against 4 captains is a pretty weak argument considering none of them went Bankai whilst he fully released. In the end he was pretty much defeated by a single captain and by his shikai).

Also, you didn't mention the rest, like how Histugaya said that the Gotei 13 short 3 captains would not be a match for 10 VL led by Aizen. In other words, Hitsu was talking about the Gotei 13 (w/ maybe Ichigo & his gang) facing Aizen and 10 VL. It's been confirmed Aizen did not have that number, while the Gotei 13 had a number of powerful allies Hitsugaya wasn't considering like the vizards, Urahara & Yourichi.

This is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that he still said Vasto Lorde's were stronger than Captains. The majority of the Vasto Lorde's weren't really defeated in team battles. But if you're going to bring me down for "not mentioning the rest" what do the reckon the "20 brothers" bit from Aizen in the very last page was meant to imply? Because given the context and how they were just talking about how many Vasto Lorde's it would take to bring down Soul Society, I can only see it being interpreted in one way..

Even if you dismiss all that, calling this a retcon is a severe stretch because just saying that one warrior's combat abilities are greater is not any way saying that it's 100% that the superior fighter will win, or even that the better fighter will definitely win 6/10 times, it's just saying that one side has an advantage.

No offense but this is a rather cheap fan wanking handwave. I already said that if the explanation is not good enough then it's still a retcon.