A character officially enters a certain level the moment s/he proves s/he can hang around or even beat another character on that level in a fight.
Also, having a feat above a certain level is not the same as surpassing said level.
Take Moria who was not on YC level for example. In his Shadow Asgard form, a single punch of his split Thriller Bark (which was island sized) in half. I am pretty sure a YC like Katakuri or Cracker could not split an island in half in one hit. Yet Shadow Asgard Moria lost to G3 pre-TS and haki-less Luffy.
We also know obviously any YC would not lose to Shadow Asgard Moria or G3 pre-TS and haki-less Luffy.
Catch my drift?
This proves that current Zoro performing an admiral level feat is very very possible.
Then how strong is luffy? He didn't actually beat Cracker or katakuri in pure 1v1 no holds combat right? But the mere fact that Luffy got proficient in FS somewhat and got advanced armament, then that's it, we now say Luffy is above YC1 right?
Like isn't Luffy above YC1 based purely on perceived feats and portrayal and not actually defeating YCs? By portrayal I mean Story portrayal. We've seen big mom manhandling Marco so we know how easily yonko can dispatch YC1 right? But the story won't allow that to happen to luffy.
Plain and simple. There's no way Luffy is going to get the Marco treatment as par the fact that it already happened. Luffy already got throttled by kaido and big mom so his next encounter with them cannot go that badly again as per rules of the story. There must be physical representations of Luffy's growth and just the nature of the story tells us Luffy must do better than Marco so luffy must be above YC1 right now.
That's just story portrayal. Luffy hasn't beaten any commanders straight up and only has top tier haki-less feats and story pot rays that just immediately tells us he's above YC1.
So Zoro by definition can't be vet level. The story portrayal doesn't allow it. There's no vet level characters who can beat YC1s. Like the mere fact that Zoro must defeat King directly means he cannot be vet level by story portrayal standards. Unless you think Zoro can haki bloom himself into jumping three tiers in one fight. Zoro can't beat King unless he's already YC.
If you insist he's vet level then he has to have way more fights before getting to king. And that's not happening.
