officially after the fight
its like saying person A is the world champion before even winning the race.. thats not how it works lol
Yes but there's a point for that to be ''official''. There's no official committee in One Piece decides who is best and who isn't.
There are multiple competitions that the champion needs to attend every year against the other athletes or in every specific timeline they need to attend, otherwise if champion doesn't attend or doesn't defend the title against others, there will be a new champion, and former champion loses its title due to inactivity even if he never actually loses in the competition.
This is not a model that you can use for One Piece as Mihawk can sit with his baboons for years and he doesn't need to fight any competitiors to defend his title and some people will keep saying the same thing that Mihawk is the best.
Titles in One Piece doesn't work like the real competitions in sports. Which is why as I and other people like
@Seraphoenix said earlier,
Nope. There is no 'universal' title. They are all based on the in-verse perception which fundamentally means they are subjective. The only time people in-verse have questioned titles, is ironically with WB at MF. Also if Kaido for instance accepted it as 'universal' he would have not been on his way to kill WB.
the titles are kind of subjective in One Piece and there's no official committee that decides who is the best and who isn't.
Which is why in
Zoro Novel people discusses who is the best swordsman? Candidates were Dressrosa Zoro, Vista, Shanks and Mihawk etc. If it was an official title that a committee decides, there wouldn't be any discussion, and because of that you can't compare this to the sports competition for the reasons I mentioned above.
There's also a fact that Mihawk never defeated even Pre-Yonko Shanks but somehow ended as best swordsman because titles are subjective and he didn't need to defeat even Pre-Yonko Shanks.