You are one of the very few reasonable kidd fans. Why do they hype him up so much?
I mean to be honest, you downplay him hard, although idk if you are serious about that or if you just do it out of spite.
Kid's stronger than most YC1s, imo.
but I've only reached that conclusion because I pay a lot of attention to his fights, because I actually cared about the character before Oda ruined it.
Oda's issue is that he portrays him utterly incoherently. For the rival of Luffy, defeater of big mom, you'd think he would have at least some development pre-onigashima, right? Nope, the first time Kid does anything is when he fights on the roof.
Oda plays both sides. Kid is Luffy's rival, but also he's trash. He doesn't hurt kaido, he doesn't get ACoC, he is overshadowed by Law, but yet Oda will still declare Kid as Luffy's rival and give him a 2+ billion berry bounty. This is utterly incoherent portrayal and I wish Oda would just pick a side and stick with it.
You want Kid to be a failed rival? Okay, have Luffy beat the living shit out of him. No, you want him to be a real rival? Then let him get ACoC, hurt kaido, and beat linlin without bombs. Either option is better than the third, shitty option of playing both sides because you wrote yourself into a corner.
Because Oda portrays Kid incoherently, its hard to objectively powerscale him, because even Oda isn't very good at that.