Oda is truly humiliating Sanji's haters this arc. Making him humiliate the main boss [who insults Jinbe, while the latter deals with minions alongside Franky. I was absolutely right about the gap between them, but frankly, you could already see it in Wano; Franky had similar feats back then, and Who's-Who is inferior to a wounded Jack, by the latter's own admission. Izo has better feats than Jinbe, doing a 1v2 while injured against two guys who humiliated Apoo and Drake, and we know Who's-Who asked Queen for help against Drake for a reason.
Zoro faces yet another humiliation, a thousand promises like "Wano warriors will follow me," blah blah blah, and as usual, he has to rely on the luck of Dorry and Brogy doing the work for them, by the way ruining all the hype from fans in here who thought he had a chance of doing a 1v2.
The fact that Sanji uses Ifrit Jambe in base form and is about to take down a Knight [means only one thing: get ready for a new flame with Conqueror's Haki. Oda is being very explicit this arc with the Gaban = Rayleigh comparison, Nami saying "Jinbe, I expected more from you," but then Sanji arrives and saves them and everyone praises him saying they expected exactly this from him. Now, Oda is once again silencing those who claimed a closeness between Sanji and the fish-man, even providing a new point of evolution where the cook is overcoming his antipathy for the nakama, an evolution of character and strength, and a legitimate clean 1v1.
Oda is truly treating Sanji better than anyone else after Luffy; you can really see he is among his favorites. Only those who don't write stories don't know that authors love to put their favorites against a thousand difficulties.
