Indeed.
It's obvious that a combination of Big Mom being too strong for the Straw Hats and their allies and thus needing to find excuses to stop her from massacring them, his inability to find better reasons to justify the Straw Hats and co's survival and/or escape from her, Oda's incredibly weird sense of humor and his sexism, as well as him trying to find an excuse to remove her as an antagonist in Wano (a disastrous decision in itself) are what led to this incredibly cringe and frustrating fiasco with her in the second half of WCI and during all of Wano where Big Mom wasn't treated at all as the extremely powerful character and very real threat she should have been, save for her clash with Kaido and her very few feats against his lieutnants.
As for Kaido, Oda actually delivered with his powers and feats. It's with his personality, his relations and dynamics with his crew and other pirates and the marines, as well as his history and his empire outside of Wano with him surely having at least dozens of islands under his rule and fleets outside of Wano, his decision to make everything about Wano and Orochi serving as the mastermind and more active antagonist of the two that Oda failed Kaido.
Treating Big Mom better and more as the Yonko she was and a legitimately huge and scary threat and keeping her away from Wano, while detailling more Kaido's backstory and personality, his dynamics with his All-Stars and Flying Fighters as well as with Rocks D. Xebec in his youth and the rest of the Rocks Pirates, exploring his empire and forces outside of Wano and also making him the active antagonist and mastermind of the Beast Pirates would have been far better story and more beneficial to both characters than the huge disasters we have gotten instead.