There's also the issue that Goku was focusing on grabbing Raditz's tail, which he was looking out for during the battle, but didn't get the opportunity of doing till after Raditz dodged Piccolo's first cannon attack. The Super Kamehame-Ha seems to be Goku's best energy attack at this point anyhow and he figured he should go all out on Raditz while he was still at maximum power, so he didn't pussyfoot around with other maneuvers. I recall that he did fire a full-powered Kamehame-Ha attack, which barely resulted in Raditz's hand tingling. As for Goku, I think he was pretty much distracted with his own emotional problems, in the manner that his son was kidnapped by his long-lost only brother. He probably saw his new attack as their only hope of actually killing Raditz, but still wanted to fight him head-on with Goku to attempt to inflict damage and distract him for the attack. I like to think that the reason Goku and Piccolo held back on techniques was that with Piccolo, he was reserving energy to use his Makankosappo, which at this time he could only fire twice and he'd already wasted energy earlier in hitting Raditz with the Destructive Wave.

Actually, I'd expect Piccolo to be stronger because he had nothing better to do than train while Goku was living the family life. Five years is a pretty long time and even though they were stronger, I'd expect them to be weaker.

Other thing you can look at is the fact that this was the first time Goku and Piccolo fought in five years. But for Piccolo, I don't believe he would have done that.I think I know what you mean but you need to understand that the Piccolo Goku fight was the last major fight of DragonBall so a lot was going down then. Why is that? Does everyone understand what I am trying to convey? I think maybe after the tournament Goku relaxed and got married and didn't train at all, so he could have slacked off. Yet, during the Raditz fight Piccolo used nothing from back then, and Goku didn't either. Piccolo and Goku used so many different techniques. And they both seemed a lot stronger than they did when fighting Raditz. I remeber back during the tournament, 5 years earlier I believe, Piccolo and Goku fought each other. Jamstar wrote:When Goku and Piccolo fought Raditz I noticed something strange or odd.

Goku and piccolo vs raditz