Warning: Spoilers Ahead for Ultimate X-Men #12
Even after Sabretooth got a power upgrade and grew stronger than Wolverine, Wolverine still found a way to humiliate him. The seemingly never ending battle between Wolverine and Sabretooth transcends multiversal barriers, with the two at each other’s throats in more than one reality. Within the Ultimate Universe of Marvel Comics, Sabretooth received an ultimate upgrade courtesy of the Weapon X Program, an upgrade he received in an effort to make the villain strong enough to kill Wolverine once and for all. However, because of the alterations made to Sabretooth’s body, Wolverine is given ample psychological ammo with which he used to humiliate Sabretooth enough to defeat him.
In Ultimate X-Men #12 by Mark Miller, Adam Kubert, and Tom Derenick, Sabretooth challenges Wolverine to a fight to end all fights after receiving some adamantium enhancements given to him by Weapon X. Sabretooth had four adamantium claws implanted in each arm that extended like Wolverine’s claws. Adamantium coats Sabretooth’s teeth as well. While the upgrade made Sabretooth much more deadly, Wolverine wasn’t even the slightest bit intimidated. In fact, Wolverine saw these enhancements as something to mock, getting into Sabretooth’s head and throwing him off his game enough to eventually win the fight.
Upon seeing Sabretooth’s adamantium claws and teeth for the first time, Wolverine mocks him by saying, “Four claws on each hand, huh? You really put a lot of thought into that redesign, Sabretooth. That should definitely shake your rep as the made-in-Hong-Kong version of me.” Wolverine is basically saying that Sabretooth let Weapon X mutilate and experiment on him just to end up being a cheap knock off of him. That insult leads to Sabretooth violently attacking Wolverine, at which point Logan takes another shot at the villain. Only this time Wolverine attacks his intelligence by referring back to the fact that Sabretooth volunteered to be a part of Weapon X while Wolverine was brainwashed and tortured into doing their bidding. “What was the deal with that, anyway? You born stupid, or did you just like the killing?” to which Sabretooth responded with more blind aggression. Wolverine quickly took advantage of the villain letting his guard down.
Even while Wolverine threw off Sabretooth with the barrage of insults, Sabretooth was still inflicting much more damage to Wolverine than Logan was inflicting. Basically Sabretooth was winning the fight between him and Wolverine in the physical sense, but the worst jabs Wolverine inflicted were emotional ones. Sabretooth was finally ready to end the fight once and for all by holding Wolverine’s head under water in an effort to drown him. Sabretooth was relishing in his apparent victory, showing Wolverine that everything the X-Man said about him wasn’t true, and while he was holding Wolverine down, Sabretooth left himself wide open to a finishing move. Wolverine sliced at Sabretooth’s crotch, forcing the villain to release Wolverine who then threw Sabretooth off of a cliff, ending the fight right then and there.
Sabretooth was much stronger than Wolverine because of the upgrades he got from Weapon X, upgrades the villain pushed for himself. Because of his fighting superiority, Wolverine used his brain over his brawn, something he knew Sabretooth wasn’t a match for. While the tactic didn’t seem to be working at first, the psychological jabs Wolverine dealt made their mark as Wolverine used Sabretooth’s ultimate upgrade to humiliate him, leading to Wolverine’s ultimate victory.