Anyways, the scabbards are major characters this arc. The strongest of them rival the calamities in strength, and they all have backstory with the calamities.
Jack destroyed Zou
Queen imprisoned kawamatsu for years
King stabbed Asura in the Oden flashback
Not to mention the scabbards fought the calamities when they went against kaido 20 years ago.
if Zoro will play a serious role against kaido, he shouldn't take a fight away from the scabbards, imo. I also feel like the scabbards might be more equipped to take out king than Zoro.
Kinemon can cut fire and izo can snipe him from the sky. In any case, we can assume that Zoro is probably YC1 level given what he did to Killer pre-enma.
so there's no real point in having him beat king. Oda can just have them clash to show they are equals. Similarly, there would be no point in having asura doji, who had better portrayal than jack, fight a tobi roppo.