But I don't want another Luffy vs. Kaido 2.0 against Mihawk where Zoro is clearly much inferior and then suddenly gets X power-up to miraculously win
It won't be that way for sure. Zoro is never fighting an opponent & losing 3 times to then get powerups mid battle 3x to finally beat him.
If Zoro loses a fight, he either dies or loses limbs bare minimum.
Luffy v. Kaidou worked like because Luffy is famous for his healing punches & he needed like 10 dozens of them along with the Strongest Gear 5 attack to bring a monster like Kaidou down.
Against peak lethality & black blades, this is simply not possible lol.
If Zoro v. Mihawk is gonna be like that, i'd drop the manga that instant itself.
And if Zoro was nearly good enough to fight Mihawk since the timeskip, then there's no real satisfaction in that because we never actually got to see his growth
No he clearly needs to pick up clear powerups like CoC & CoO from the Shiryu fight to then stand toe to toe.
Mihawk is 100% the fight where he makes Black Blades so you can count those as a possible Powerup as well.
Start of Ts Zoro is like Vista, he can spar with non-all out Mihawk.
The moment you start bringing named attacks into account, the difference is huge.