I said it in 2022 didn’t I?
Kaido was a massive disappointment in terms of strength. The idea that base Luffy was a serious rival to hybrid Kaido was a complete joke.
Notice after Wano, Luffy immediately goes back into Gear spamming for every other opponent. Base Luffy was never again relevant after hybrid Kaido.
Against Lucci, Luffy immediately went into Gear 5.
Against Kizaru, Luffy immediately goes into Snake Man, gets trashed, goes into Gear 5, and gets half focused on by an emotionally conflicted Kizaru who treated Nika as more of a nuisance/distraction while his real struggle was bringing himself to murder Vegapunk.
Against the Gorosei, Luffy spams Gear 5 constantly, he tries Gear 3 but Warcury trashes him and is forced to slam Gear 5.
Against Imu, now Luffy is using Gear 5 and either getting low diffed or outright one shot depending on how the chapter goes while Imu calls him weak.
The idea that base fucking Luffy could go blow for blow with Kaido was the absolute end of the Yawnco agenda. Kaido really is the post timeskip Moriah.
Moriah’s whole character is that he had PTSD from facing stronger characters than him, we thought Moriah was strong for his time but it was always obvious that he was a silver medalist.
Kaido is the same, Kaido’s whole character is PTSD from Oden bodying him, never fighting any characters stronger than him, and constantly being humiliated by wanting to fight strong characters who never acknowledged him or gave him the time of day. Kaido’s immediate destiny was to be that exact same silver medalist, it was always obvious to me that he was going to get far out classed with time.