Yup, I agree. The first half dragged out way too long and filler was used where I felt was unnecessary. One example of many is when Hawkins' Strawman emerged, it was exaggerated to the point it became annoying.
I think the content was fine, an extension of the fight between Zoro and Hawkins is a fine idea for an episode. However, how they handled it in this episode left a lot to be desired, and I think that's for a few reasons. I think the most important of which in this case, would be the direction, for the most part, the first half lacked creativity in making the fight visually interesting beyond fairly mainly fairly plain shots ideas and compositions, although there were some cool things here and there that simply weren't expanded upon in any meaningful way(for example, that really cool shot of Hawkins being half strawman was something they really didn't do anything with visually in the fight beyond the most basic back and forth between the strawman imitating Hawkins). Adding to this, the OST placement in the first half, beside the generally pretty bland compositions, failed to really inspire excitement for scenes that didn't benefit from being well animated. Going on, the majority of the fight wasn't well animated overall. A lot of the action failed to really convey weight to the action scenes with a few noted exceptions, or suffered from really awkward or janky movements. This all kind of culminates in a pretty stale extended action sequence, despite the things actually occurring being cool, and really failed to grab my interest until a few distinctly notable well animated scenes(IE the finisher, which Katsumi Ishizuka, an absolutely nutty animator and a legend of the One Piece anime, knocked out of the park).
