Yup, it's clear now he didn't and couldn't use Kizaru to hype the Emperor crew for real. They almost still seemed small fry to him, even Luffy was being treated like some rookie for the most part. I will also add Lucci in here, Oda respected him way too much to hype tool him properly. He never even lost once in that arc, every fight was left inconclusive.
People were predicting Egghead would be the arc to establish them as a Yonkou crew, to show the world why and simply just flex all arc, but that never came. Instead Egghead was Luffy's most embarassing showing in the entire manga, his stocks had never dropped in one arc the way they did there.
Now suddenly on Elbaph the Strawhats are looking like a legit Emperor Crew.