There's no rocket science involved.
Giants hyped Roger's trio as 3 people equivalent to each other.
Rayleigh was hyped during his intro.
Now Gaban entered the picture. gets the same hype treatment. compared to both roger and ray. the 3 much stronger than everyone else on the crew, etc, etc, etc, said to be equal to rayleigh, all that jazz.
Then hajrudin says "oh, i think he would probably be the 3rd strongest", which gaban goes on the sanji salty mode parallel and says he's actually number 2.
This is nothing different from the ace/sabo 51/49 duels. Doesn't mean they are freaking chemically equals. Only the cope squad thinks anyone is talking about that.
It's like, so freaking "in your face". Oda's not a fan of subtlety on this regard at all.
But it is what it is.
We are just enjoying the leeching agenda that mihawk/zoro fans so happily used and still use for themselves.
Will Sanji be stronger than zoro? No.
But if they were to fight EoS, could EoS Sanji beat EoS Zoro? sure. the odds would still be slightly on zoro's favor, as they should. But that's pretty much just it.
There's absolutely no malice involved in any of this. No downplay at all.
But the eagerness to separate zoro from sanji is what makes people mad about this whole thing.
