Yeah, Oda is handling this fight in dumb mode to be honest. Onigiri w/o haki, Law using GK on Dragon Kaido and downgrading to CS for BM, Luffy running out of G4 w/o even trying KKG...
Clealry he's waiting for round 2.
But yeah, even considering that Luffy running out of G4 is totally shocking. I always took the top tier fights last days as empty hype cause Oda would never draw anything like that with Luffy involved anyway, but him running out of G4 before round 1 against Kaido is over is just lol.
Clealry Oda has got to have something in mind and I think only awakening with a whole new set of powers that is overall less taxing than G4 might work. But then why did we did spend so much time with Udon Luffy to see him focusing only on Adv haki? Did he learn awakening off panel? Maybe the strategy is to use awakening to wear Kaido down and then KKG him. Guess we'll see.