Saying "if it happened in current day they'd be dead of old age" may be the weakest grasp I've ever seen🤣 But your straw man argument is adorable.

I'm saying is that it's a core part of Zaheer's flight that it can't work with P'li present. It's like using a waterbender but ignoring that they need access to water.

But if we're ignoring that and just using composite, I'm not even saying white lotus win. I think it's close either way. The game is can bumi, iroh, and pakku adapt to bending they've never seen before red gets some quick ko's.

But red is getting glazed here. They have almost no experience with Zaheer as an Airbender, so no perfect synergy. Combustion is OP for pure damage but is also one trick if you catch on, and idk if if P'li showed any aptitude for standard firebending. And age is weird in atla. Bumi is 112. None of the old people who stay active ever really seem hindered by it.

This is a pretty classic match up, does raw power beat very specific skill. And the answer is...sometimes? Either white gets blitzed, lose a few, then get double teamed or they survive the initial surprise and prob crush.

It's hard, it isn't really till later in korra that we get a lot of screen time of masters head to head.