It’s about the portrayal. The OP community long ago used to place much higher value on portrayal than they do now apparently.
Whitebeard is a high top tier even in old age. He was stronger than Kaido and Shanks at least in one point in his life. Therefore we can assume pretty safely that Whitebeard has his own means of combatting top tier FS users like Kaido and Saint Shanks. Which in this case yeah is probably FS since Whitebeard doesn’t have any speed based fruit or anything like that.
Whitebeard is a character who we only got a glimpse of at his prime and full strength.
We will never see him go all out on panel, for characters like Whitebeard/Roger or Garp/Sengoku... I'm fully for going off on portrayal & saying they must have "something" that allows them to handle attacks like TB.
Big Mom, Shanks, Blackbeard, Mihawk, Dragon, the 5 Admirals are characters who are going to go all out on panel.
For them portrayal only goes so far. We'll know much better when they actually go all out, but it's the Final Saga now... Oda isn't shying away from showing top tiers fighting each other.
But the other Admirals do benefit from the overall level Kizaru showed. So we can assume any Admiral deals with Snake Man with just as little effort as Kizaru did. They may not speed blitz it but Snake Man is a low-ish diff for any Admiral based on Kizaru’s showing.
This is where we disagree.
I dont believe in gifting Kizaru's feats to other Admirals anymore just like how I don't believe in gifting Kaidou's feats to Yonkos like Big Mom.
Like do you wanna go ahead and say Big Mom will handle Snakeman cuz Kaidou & Shanks can?
Kizaru is extremely hard to land a clean hit on, he pushed Luffy to Gear 5 because the fastest before that (Snakeman) was useless.
The other Admirals aren't nearly as hard to land a hit on, they can defend with their abilities but that's it.
Or, do you really believe Greenbull's gigantic Forest form would dodge Snakeman the way Kizaru did?
Based on their future showings and abilities, we'll know how they'll interact with Gear 4 & Gear 5 Luffy when he uses CoC.
Before Kaido showed FS, I would have said the chances of Whitebeard and Garp having better CoO than Kaido were 100%. My opinion hasn’t changed.
Even if Kaidou has FS, he only uses it sparingly when he is pushed to it.
It's not like he's spamming it 24*7 like Katakuri does.
95% of the time, Kaidou would be easier to land a hit on than Whitebeard (who Gura Gura) or Garp (extremely mobile with Soru/Geppou) tbh.
The thing about TB is I always just kind of assumed it was like, a standard attack for a top tier. TB got wanked as hard as it did because Kaido was fighting a bunch of high tiers.
Once Luffy unlocked AdCoC, he could easily match AdCoC with just a punch. And that’s really how I always saw TB. Any top tier would easily match TB with their own signature attacks. It’s not some blindingly fast attack, it’s just that Kaido was fighting weak opponents. TB was immediately reduced to the level of base Luffy’s punches as soon as he unlocked AdCoC.
TB is a standalone "blitz" technique, it's handled much like how Zoro's Onigiri or Shishi Sonson is.
Zoro does not swing his sword around in cqc at the same speed as when he performs these moves, just like how Kaidou does not swing his club around at the same speed.
It's blindingly fast, and how Luffy handled it was shown to us, step-by-step.
He got completely blitzed in Act 1, while not seeing the Future.
Other non-FS users like Law? Could do nothing.
On the Rooftop, Luffy tried to see the Future while in base & still got hit by the technique.
And with the previous experience, he sees the future & finally dodges it in Gear 2nd in his next round.
Gear 2nd & FS was like the baseline-requirement to handle it cleanly. It's the first time, that Oda hyped the speed of an attack this way - so fast that it's impossible to handle without seeing the future.
So yeah, I don’t think Kuzan would really have any trouble with TB, the same as Whitebeard’s stab which was a stab intended to kill an Admiral. The people who think TB would start one shotting other top tiers don’t understand what a top tier is lol.
I never said TB one-shots other top tiers, idk where that's coming from.
Though, gifting every top tier the feats of dodging TB off of "top tier" portrayal, is like claiming Kaidou & Big Mom will easily handle Snakeman cuz "muh Yonko".
Reality is, Kaidou only did it when suddenly using FS himself & Big Mom simply cannot.