That is what Whitebeard was to Roger
In the end PK Roger took WB’s right hand man, leaving Roger with 3 top tiers outside of himself on his crew whereas WB had none.
And Ray and Gaban are likely stronger than Oden.
1. Whitebeard is an obvious exception character. Oda went out of his way to be like, oh he could be PK if he wanted, but as we know, he wanted to build a family cult of personality of weaker characters who wanted help in life. That´s basically what Akainu was saying about him.
2. Rogers era isn´t the same as Luffy´s. Roger is not the sun god Nika/new Joyboy or whatever. As far as we know, he doesn´t have a dad and grandpa who are top tiers in themselves and etc. He just trained really hard and fought a lot. Luffy´s era is different. No one is allowed to ever look better then Luffy or really be on his level. Luffy isn´t trying to beat anyone in his generation he´s trying to beat the admiral/Yonko as he told Fujitora. All characters older than him by decades, with some of the Yonko literally being Rogers own rivals, lmfao.
3. Again, Oda just wanks the old gen more then the new one. You would be coping to say otherwise. There´s no way you would have a situation where Zoro is taking Luffy´s girl. When we have a war like MF, the newgen is pretty much irrelevent, it isn´t like GV.