They told us the sword didn’t matter rocks was someone who had no style
Apples and Oranges, mate.
Rocks right now is still just a guy swinging around a sword, even within the side by side Zoro comparison. In Zoro's case it was the the last movement of an otherwise fully mastered movement pattern, whereas Rocks just swung his sword to the ground.
It's swordmanship just by name, because he's using a sword, but it pales in comparison to the craft Zoro has mastered over years of training. A street bawler ain't a professional boxer, even if he's 2meters tall, weighing 115kg and fucking the average joe pro Boxer up by throwing punches.
You wouldn't call Whitebeard a swordsman either. And I myself would much more consider Ray, after his latest feat, an actual swordsman.
Imo you cannot have it both ways. Either you say that the swordsmanship code, that was multiple times mentioned throughout the series, and the craft/the art and the mastered movement patterns that obviously belong to "real" swordsmanship styles such as Itoryu and Nitoryu aren't important markers at all and therefore shit on the whole existence of guys like Zoro, Mihawk, Ryuma, Oden and Vista or you just accept the fact, that the WSS is bound to very specific conditions and is very irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, cause it's a pirate manga.
King for example wasn't meeting these conditions aswell, even though he fought with a sword. Where do we draw the line then?