We first really saw Rayleigh as a great pirates number 2, and he was portrayed a top tier, since we knew Roger and WB were rivals, we could assume that Marco and rayleigh were something relative, and this was helped by Marco not really taking an L in Marineford, and for like a decade people wanked Marco, Jozu and kind of Vista as guys who are really up there(Jozu and Vista were always trash but people didn't want to admit it). However, the consensus in the fandom now is that, Rayleigh and Marco would fight, but also Rayleigh wasn't trying at all over the period of like, 3 days or whatever. Which isn't even wrong but is just inherently retarded