To be completely honest it still wouldn’t completely surprise me oda of all people decided to reveal shanks isn’t 100% a swordsman for some random specific reason. Him being a good swordsman with something or another up his sleeve With how much oda loves him I think even his biggest haters have thought of the possibility no matter how bad they believe it’d be
But for the sake of this thread what if he really is just a swordsman nothing more nothing less. So mihawk having greater sword skill automatically means in a 1v1 mihawk is stronger
What power he could have that gives him an edge against characters even stronger than mihawk despite being a weaker swordsman? Basically the same power the yami grants Blackbeard and the power I speculate Roger might’ve had to be equal to whitebeard. The power to shut off devil fruit powers. Basically meaning he’ll be able to push them way more when faced up against top tier devil fruit users
So technically he’d stil be weaker just have a matchup advantage unlike mihawk.
Tho again if oda decided to wank shanks even more by actually making an exception to the swordman thing it wouldn’t surprise me either