Garp has named moves and in his prime had superior ACoC, but when it comes to raw punching strength, yes, we were literally told Kuzan = Garp.
Not to mention Garp using ACoC in his exchange of blows was equally matched by Kuzan, resulting in a nuke destroying the environment (so either you say Kuzan also has ACoC or a bit of ice around the fist matches ACoC, lol).
And yes, people can repeat that Garp was stabbed, but a stab doesn't reduce your AP, as I've told, people have been dishing out their strongest attacks with 1 HP left.
Arlong had said that a heavily injured Zoro would have had the ability to cut his nose if he was in a better state knowing that Garp and Zoro are both fighters that rely on their physical strength heavily.
All Shiryu's stab did was wearing his stamina down, so he would go down more quickly in the end.
Shiryu's stab was said to have weakened Garp's strength not his stamina.
Garp as someone who relies on his body to fight, when it got stabbed it meant that his strength got weakened and he wouldn't have the ability to access to his full strength that he had usually so even if he dished out his strongest attack it would still be far weaker than when it was in his no stabbed state.
There is a reason right before their exchange of punches, we had a flashback where we were told that Kuzan's punches caught up and at some point, you couldn't hear the difference, with the marine battleships being equally dented (despite Kuzan starting much later and weaker).
Zoro because of Mihawk's slash went from having the strength to injure Arlong casually to not having it to even put a scratch on his nose.




