Even with Luffy out of the eqation, how many times was Kid shown talking about Kaido compared to Zoro? And you can't pretend what he says doesn't matter is irrelevant; he was shown in the very recent chapter alongside Luffy
Okay. But Oda is doing duo antagonists right?
After this flashback, it's very clear Orochi is as much of s villain in this arc as kaido is. So Oda has to make one of the main cast care about that right?
Like we came into Wano knowing both Kaido and Orochi are the antagonists but Oda went of his way to have Luffy get tangled up with kaido AGAIN so that the reader can have on panel evidence of kaido being a villain. Hence why Luffy gets smacked and imprisoned then he decides to train. Then Oda has to do the same for the other antagonist Orochi by having him get tied up with Zoro so that we can have on panel evidence of Orochi being a villain. And bonus Zoro also gets a training sword.
Done. We've set up the two villains in the eyes of the reader through the eyes of the two primary protagonists here, Luffy and Zoro. Then a bonus flashback with the two villains being shown in the eyes of Oden.
Now a war begins. That's the basic structure of Wano so far.
I don't know whether you are talking about fight match ups and saying that's what determines "the year of Zoro" because remember "the year of Sanji" was very lacklustre in terms of fight match ups right?
You bring up kid and that's fine. He'll help with taking down kaido. It doesn't mean he's more important than Zoro though. Hell Zoro is probably gonna help with fighting kaido too so...