Lucci reinforced this by saying Zoro is weighing them down. Despite how I believe Lucci to be YC1 level, Zoro after winning should be driven to get stronger because he still feels miles away from Mihawk
Of course Zoro is miles away from Mihawk. Zoro is +/- in the 1.5B range. Mihawk sits next to Blackbeard and Shanks. Bounties are not everything but in Mihawks case that is straight up strength evaluation, he is not even the captain and yet he is above two Yonko.
We went from "Luffy is teaming up with Sanji to beat Kizaru" to Luffy vs Kizaru and Saturn
I'm FINE with Sanji becoming Piccolo, Mousse, Neji, Gajeel or whoever is the third strongest in a manga. It's almost always a huge gap between #1 and #3. Depending on the manga #2 is sometimes a bit closer, sometimes a bit further away from #1.
If Oda wants Sanji to be Sano of Rurouni Kenshin, fine, give him good fights at his level and occasionally use him as power scaling for Shishio (Yonko). But don't put him next to Saito (Zoro) or Aoshi (Law) out of nowhere.