Zoro is the "strongest" after Luffy, that doesn't mean Zoro isn't close to Sanji, he is...
Oda made King and Queen's bounties 5% apart for a reason... Zoro and Marco both put both of them on the same level of difficulty in their descriptions, I don't know why you feel the bizarre need to downplay Queen.
King uses a gimmick sword and is a lunarian, neither King nor Queen rely entirely on their fruits as 1 dimensional fighters...
Queen literally smashed Big Mom's memory back into her, and was so powerful in his snake form that Sanji- who was on Queen's level for the entire fight got low diffed by the strength disparity.
You can't say how strong Kama Sonic is either, it did nearly nothing to Kaido after a short scream, congratulations that is Raizo level.
Sanji fought Drake, toyed with Page one without Diable jambe, and was fighting King AND Queen 2vs1 for a short period of time.
Killer didn't "fight" BM and Kaido, he took pot shots against them and stalled them, ultimately doing no damage and getting relegated to Hawkins. Fighting Queen is better portrayal than fighting Hawkins, by a large margin.