Have you at least given up on your Kizaru ~ Shanks take?
Obviously not, I have yet to be given a good reason to think otherwise.
Top tiers in One Piece are very closely knit. A distracted Kizaru has been keeping up with Luffy in G5, and for the first time finally bled on panel (after he was cheapshotted?). No way can my standards of any one be that high where I drop them for simply bleeding against a fellow top tier, that's insane especially given what we've seen from Wano and WCI.
I'd be rich if I had a dime for everytime a fodder made Kaidou scream or bleed. I still had Kaidou top 1 despite durability being his whole thing cause I can focus on the bigger picture. The equivalent of this would be Franky keeping up with Kizaru's speed or something. Nika making Kizaru bleed or downing him temporarily are all within expectations, it'd be disrespectful to Luffy at this point to treat this like a big deal.
I'm genuinely more surprised we didn't see more of Luffy outside of G5 being competitive with Kizaru. For the longest time I thought Snakeman would be the driving force in handing Kizaru a loss, so far I've been proven wrong. We've seen Kizaru in a deadlock against Nika too, not gonna react to every scratch he takes moving forward especially when he hasn't been focused on Luffy even once this entire arc. Take that in. Which is why I'm excited for a locked in Kizaru showcase now that Vegapunk's death has arguably been delivered as promised.