Yeah thats true, we did get to see the fight until their final clash, but Oda cut away from that really nicely, he set up that symbolic, mysterious finale but here he's cut away too soon and BB has only just started using the Yami now too, right before Oda cut away too.
Yeah exactly! The only thing worse than a death fakeout maybe is an offscreen death imo, although I suppose it can work in the case like with Shiryu revealing he killed Absalom and took his DF? But at the same time, if the same thing happened to Law, i'd be pretty damn pissed. Its one thing to kill him off but to do it offscreen? Now that would be insulting!
Theres also the Chekovs Gun/hanging plotline of the immortality surgery and that has to come into play somehow. I've seen people keep suggesting its gonna be used on Luffy but I wholeheartedly disagree with it/dislike that.