>>544583030
>Given how Vegeta boasted, he probably treated it more like a Piccolo Jr. situation
Piccolo Jr was more like "hey I'll stay ahead and keep you in check, you're a nice rival and we don't want to lose Kami". Vegeta was 100% about the salty runback. I guess you could say Goku believed Piccolo and Vegeta were the strongest guys, hence sparing them to keep someone on his level?

>that's kind of what he was doing with Frieza
Too different. The Freeza fight is full of hatred and spite, there's no real room for martial arts here.