That's an interesting take.
How would you rewrite the roles of BM, WB, BB and the Admirals as per this idea?
Would you introduce the Roger/Oden FB later or earlier? How would the story overall go?
I mean, putting Kaido around Gecko's story-order needs a whole re-write, which I'm not able to on my phone.
But that's the role best suited to him: gatekeeper between story halves.
You come half way defeating pirate after pirate, until you've overcome the best of them (or so he says), only for the WG to handle your ass without too much hussle (hinting at the bigger IMU problem).
Back from the timeskip (thus stronger), you face BM (Kaido's equal), yet she's more of an obstacle than he ever was because, while she's his equal in strength, eveything else in her crew is designed to counter his shortcomings, so blackmail, gimmicks, and cheating are more than allowed. This way, Luffy can still show his superiority in power against BM, while the SHs can show their resourcefulness and wits against the BMP and BM network at large.
BB still remains the strongest pre-ts human, but he uses that strength against the WG, so he's not an antagonist, like Kaido or BM.
After you deal with Hody's racism & Kaido's female reskin, Kinemon and Momo's stories can be tied directly to VP, making Toki's (and Wano's) shortcomings not linked to an outsider and his abused local minion, but directly linked to science: the AK fell because they had all that tech, but lacked the morals to properly use it. Instead, Toki sent her son into the future, when the smartest man alive can replicate all of AK's inventions, with the added hindsight of the 800 years separating the two, so that he doesn't repeat their errors.
From here, though, the story had to diverse massively, as neither the Wano arc nor the Egghead one would exist in this version by virtue of story consequences alone.