Wolverine is one of the most appropriately named characters in comic books. He's small, furry, and will fight like a snarling hell beast. He's taken more physical abuse than possibly any other character at Marvel and dished it right back out too. That tendency to fight until he is quite literally unable to physically move is a hallmark of Wolverine's character, and it's given readers some of the goriest fight scenes this side of Robert Kirkman's Invincible. Here are the most brutal battles in the character's history.
Sabretooth in Uncanny X-Men #213
The one that started it all, this is Logan's first of very many fights with Victor Creed. It went down during Chris Claremont's iconic run on Uncanny X-Men, during the famous Mutant Massacre storyline. Their battle begins in the tunnel dwelling Morlocks' home before Logan brings the environment down on top of Creed. Round two sees the fight continue and rage through almost the entirety of Charles Xavier's estate. It's notable in that it's the first time readers got to see the mortal enemies come to blows in such extended and violent nature. In a wonderful display of their inherent animalistic nature too, as there's even some biting thrown in for good measure. The pair shred and stab each other to bits for nearly the entire issue until the fight takes them to a cliffside bordering the ocean, where Wolverine tackles his larger and somehow hairier foe off the edge. It set the tone for every single one of their fights yet to come.
Omega Red in X-Men #5
Omega Red isn't as prolific a villain as someone like Sabretooth, but he's a truly sadistic villain who gave Logan one of the longest and most relentless fights of his life. Carrying a wicked set of healing factor canceling Carbonadium tentacles and a healing factor of his own, Omega Red is the ultimate Wolverine deterrent. The Russian serial killer turned supervillain was employed by The Hand and was led to believe that Logan possessed a device called the Carbonadium Synthesizer that would save his life. He tracked Wolverine down and the two fought a mind-numbing 18 hours in the midst of a snowstorm. For every hunk Logan would tear out of Omega Red, the villain would return in favor with his tentacles. In the end, it was a fight that Omega Red would win. In more recent comics, the villain has been giving Wolverine a pretty hard time in Krakoa.
Cyclops in X-Men: Schism #4-#5
A fight decades in the making. Years and years of bad blood between Wolverine and Cyclops came to a head in the climax of the Schism storyline. While the rivalry between Charles Xavier's wayward sons was always personal in nature (that whole thing where Logan was trying to sleep with Scott's wife for several years), it was ideology that made them come to blows. As Logan was ready to blow himself and Scott to smithereens over the latter's insistence on using their students in combat. Their fight was shockingly gruesome, as Cyclops quite literally blows Wolverine's face off with his eye-beams fairly early on in the fight. But losing a face isn't something that will slow down Logan, as he keeps going even with his skull hanging out. The two beat each other to a bloody pulp before the timely interruption of a Sentinel and their students break up the fight. While no one died in the end, the fallout of the battle led to Wolverine and Cyclops leading separate teams, with Logan ironically taking the much more peaceful approach in his teaching methods. They're all good now though.
Magneto in X-Men #25
One of the more one-sided but iconic battles in Wolverine's history is his gut-churning loss against Magneto in X-Men #25. No fight between the Canuck and the Master of Magnetism is really gonna play out in Logan's favor. He's got several hundred pounds of Adamantium bonded to his skeleton. Taking place in the finale of the Fatal Attractions storyline, Magneto singlehandedly faces down the X-Men, and makes a gruesome example out of Logan after he gets a good hit in. In an iconic moment that was aped in X-Men: Days of Future Past, Magneto destabilizes Wolverine's Adamantium down to a molecular level and slowly rips it out of his body. It's still a painful sight to look at almost 30 years later. Even after Magneto is finally subdued, Wolverine is comatose with dozens of tendrils of Adamantium protruding out of his body like some sort of mutilated porcupine. It sent Logan down a bizarre and bestial path with no course correction until Apocalypse returned the adamantium.
Deadpool in Wolverine: Origins
Like Sabretooth, Wade Wilson has had his fair share of dustups with Wolverine, though they're admittedly more lighthearted in nature. Their extended showdown in Wolverine: Origins skews the line between ultra-violence and Looney Tunes as Deadpool brings out the big guns; everything from falling pianos to exploding ducks. Though it eventually takes a much darker turn as Deadpool throws Wolverine into traffic and lights the world on fire with a well-placed RPG. From there, Logan goes into a berserker rage and limbs start flying. It's gratuitous in the best way possible, as Wade and his hero eviscerate each other nonstop across 6 issues.
Punisher in Punisher #17
Though they're on a team together now, Wolverine and Frank Castle haven't exactly got along very well in the past. Never has this or Garth Ennis' hatred of superhero's been more evident than in Punisher #17. After teaming up together to fight a crime syndicate of little people (again, Garth Ennis comic) Frank shoots Wolverine in the junk because he was getting on his nerves. And to keep him down, he runs over him with a steam roller for good measure. While Punisher got the last laugh here, Wolverine's son, Daken, got some payback on Frank later.
Daken in Uncanny X-Force #34
This one is quick, violent, and possibly the most upsetting entry on the entire list. In the finale of Rick Remender's Uncanny X-Force, Wolverine has to face off with the most estranged and psychotic of his many children, Daken. Due to a brief excursion to the future, Logan knows that Daken will massacre his students at the Jean Grey School For Higher Learning. So he makes one of the hardest decisions of his life. The fight itself is brief. Daken gets a few swings in and takes out his dad's eye. Logan finishes things with a visceral slash to the chest before slamming his son's face down into a pool of water on the ground. As he drowns his son, Logan imagines the life he would've given Daken if he knew he existed. It might not take an extremely harsh toll on him physically, but the emotional toll is catastrophic.
Everything in Old Man Logan
Mark Millar's alternate-dimension post-apocalyptic Western is a strange book that swerves between moving and utterly absurd, in a good way. This book has everything, President Red Skull, Blind Hawkeye driving a jeep, and more incest Hulks than anyone will ever have a need for. While the book has plenty of gruesome fight scenes (like a brainwashed Logan murdering the X-Men in gratuitous detail and Red Skull getting his head lopped off with Cap's shield), the end of the book sees Wolverine clawing his way through Hulk's incest kids before fighting the big man himself. Now Hulk and Wolverine have had some gnarly fights, but how many of them have ended with Hulk literally eating only for Canada's greatest hero to explode out of the Jade Giant's back completely naked? Millar had some weird ideas.