Don't blame me, blame Oda. He can give characters clear cut titles look at Mihawk or WB, but then Kaido was introduced and with that the " so called" and "said to be"
Akainu performed publicly at the MF ...
There was a fight against KUZAN for 10 days, of course the public found out (JIMBEI is part of the public)
It's called "monsters" ...
But why don't these same people call you (say) THE STRONGEST IN THE WORLD?
With these displays, they don't even care about him and say that admirals are the best fighters in 1x1 (like kaido).
Therefore, it is clearly difficult to support the idea that one of these guys (admirals) is sitting in the chair as the TOP 1.
Nobody, not even the random ones, is flexing and forcing this reasoning on readers.