Linlin is irrelevant, is she? Just comic relief, is she?
In just the second chapter of the fights, Linlin has shot down 4 of the 5 Supernovas, and only failed to take out Luffy because of his natural immunity.
Hopefully this makes people wake up at the fact she is every bit as powerful and dangerous as Kaido. In Whole Cake Island, she was able to brush aside attacks thrown her way, and that's when she wasn't thinking clearly and only had cake on the mind. Now, she's combining that natural toughness with Enel-like firepower, and even greater at that. This is also another proof of how potent Zeus is. Linlin, the unstoppable force to Kaido's immovable object, and don't forget it.
We should also take early spoilers with a heavy dose of salt. They made Linlin out to be a non-factor when she's the one actually carrying Kaido thus far.
Getting to the others, Zoro himself is also proving he's not just a side show, and is very much a key figure for this battle. Kaido, the damage sponge, avoided an attack for the first time. The mere idea of Zoro giving Kaido a paper cut was considered laughable once before, but now we have Emperors actually avoiding his attacks because they are that dangerous. But these panels.
Kaido is staring at 20 years of Samurai retribution, and is too scared to meet it.
Finally, Luffy, I don't care what anyone says, Luffy's well a match for all top tiers at this point. He's not only fighting Kaido, pummeling on Kaido, he's taking his attacks head on and counter-attacking like he's Lucci, or something. Kaido is still better than him in some areas, but the point is, Luffy's competing with Kaido on an levelled playing field. And before someone mentions Kaido's hybrid, Luffy definitely has more he's learned from his 2 weeks of training. Why else would he pull out Gear 4 so casually? I'm starting to see why Oda brought Linlin there to fight alongside Kaido. We seriously under-estimated the Worst Generation.