Speculations The Wano matchups are going to be as predictable as we thought

[Sir Yasheen]

Since the full introduction of the calamities and we got a basic understanding of the Beast Pirates we got a basic understanding of their crew dynamic and strength breakdown:

S - Kaido

A - King/Queen

A minus - Jack

B - Tobi Roppo

C plus - Numbers

C - Headliners

From their some of the matchups for the war seemed obvious:

Luffy vs Kaido

Zoro/Sanji vs King/Queen

Weaker straw hats vs Tobi Roppo


This still seems to be how the fights are going to breakdown. And how is that going to go down?

Hawkins uses his limit break card to strengthen king and queen. With this King finishes of Marco, meanwhile Queen annihilates drake and the rest of the performance hall. With the samurais down, King will realize that the only leader left that matters is Monkey D. Luffy and Queen goes up to finishes off the pirates who broke out of Udon.

King attacks weakened Luffy who doesn’t have haki only for Zoro to block him, then Queen attacks the allied pirates like Law or Kid where Sanji comes in and stops him.

Luffy regains his haki and goes into his new strongest form and attacks Kaido.

Zoro will always attack the swordsman who try and get in his captains way, Sanjis fights always start with him stopping an enemy from attacking allies.

Just because it seems to go in a different way; Oda isn’t going to break his basic matchup formula.

 

[Mochiman]

I think the same. Oda is always very methodical in his battles and has a definite pattern.

But be careful, now those who defend ZKK or Sanji vs Peros will get upset.

 

[Cinera]

Being frank with you, this is an implausible fanfiction that you concocted to protect your headcanon of Zoro facing King.

Everything in the manga suggests that Zoro's main opponent this arc is Kaido.

 

[Sir Yasheen]

Being frank with you, this is an implausible fanfiction that you concocted to protect your headcanon of Zoro facing King.

Everything in the manga suggests that Zoro's main opponent this arc is Kaido.

We’ll see; but the idea that Oda would just give either king or queen to random people and not Zoro and Sanji is more implausible.

 

[bennbeckman]

Zoro is facing Kaido and not King so that's completely wrong

Sanji is on a war path to face Jack at the moment so that at this point is wrong until proven later in manga.

Chopper just hit queen so that's wrong

Marco facing King and Queen, so any prediction Marco is wrong

The only predictable matchups that happened thus far are the Flying 6 vs Nami, Usopp, Brook, Franky

People did not predict Carrot would get mid diffed this early as well.

Any predicted match up for Killer has been just flat wrong.

Lotta wrong predictions from majority of people in this forum

 

[Finalbeta]

Oda proved us how the Wano match ups are overall, at least thus far, proving in general non linear and sometimes even counterintuitive.

 

[Blackflamesanji]

stop it man, zoro is not going to fight king, his focus in wano is to fight kaido along side luffy, he got no time for king

 

[kumae]

In chapter 997 Zoro declaire that he came to cut kaido and there are people who still think that his fight will be against king
The fuck the bad reading comprehension

 

[TheKnightOfTheSea]

Zoro's fighting Kaido.

 

[zzShinichi]

Hawkins uses his limit break card to strengthen king and queen. With this King finishes of Marco, meanwhile Queen annihilates drake and the rest of the performance hall. With the samurais down, King will realize that the only leader left that matters is Monkey D. Luffy and Queen goes up to finishes off the pirates who broke out of Udon.

Why would King go to the rooftop when the Scabbards, Yamato, Momonosuke are still there
Why would he even care anyway. Like, did he learn nothing from the old hag that interupted Kaidou's fight?

 

[Sir Yasheen]

Hawkins uses his limit break card to strengthen king and queen. With this King finishes of Marco, meanwhile Queen annihilates drake and the rest of the performance hall. With the samurais down, King will realize that the only leader left that matters is Monkey D. Luffy and Queen goes up to finishes off the pirates who broke out of Udon.

Why would King go to the rooftop when the Scabbards, Yamato, Momonosuke are still there
Why would he even care anyway. Like, did he learn nothing from the old hag that interupted Kaidou's fight?

Because if the samurai are defeated there’s no reason to kill Momo. Since the only reason he wants to kill Momo is to make the samurai lose heart.

And The old hag tricked Oden that’s what Kaido didn’t appreciate and if Kaido cared about people intervening why is he okay with Big Mom there? Or with Jack fighting the earlier battles for him?

All in all, if the samurai on the floor are defeated King and Queen lose all reason to be there. And where would they go? The rooftop.

 

[zzShinichi]

Because if the samurai are defeated there’s no reason to kill Momo. Since the only reason he wants to kill Momo is to make the samurai lose heart.

And The old hag tricked Oden that’s what Kaido didn’t appreciate and if Kaido cared about people intervening why is he okay with Big Mom there? Or with Jack fighting the earlier battles for him?

All in all, if the samurai on the floor are defeated King and Queen lose all reason to be there. And where would they go? The rooftop.

Whty are you assuming all the Samurai will be defeated when
- The Scabbards just got up, alive and ready for battle
- They just got cured from Queen's Plague
- More than half of Kaidou's army just joined the Alliance
- We still got way more combatants that's avalable to fight King and Queen like XDrake, Yamato, Sanji etc
You can't compare Big Mom to the old hag. Big Mom is his equal, while King is just his subordinate, just as the old hag is some lowlife trash shit compared to Kaidou. And it was a 1v1 with Oden anyway, now it's a 2v5.
And lastly and the most important, why would King care about Kaidou where he's literally fighting along side another fellow Yonkou?

 

[thedarkdragon11]

Why would Enma be used in a fight against a mere subordinate of the one it already damaged? What a downgrade...

 

[h_zorothegoat]

Zoro/Sanji vs King/Queen

Zoro vs King?
Kaido be like:

 

[KiriNigiri]

That's quite the roundabout way to lead to a Zoro vs King scenario.

Here's a suggestion: Zoro defends the hakiless Luffy against the enemies that are literally right in front of them at this moment. Big Mom and Kaido.

 

[Finalbeta]

Zoro's fighting Kaido.

That has already happened after all.

 

[Cinera]

We’ll see; but the idea that Oda would just give either king or queen to random people and not Zoro and Sanji is more implausible.

My thoughts on the matter:

I am highly confident Zoro's main fight is Kaido, so I don't think Zoro will fight King.

There are some compelling arguments in favour of Sanji vs King:

• Sanji and King seem to have some build-up
  • They already had an actual confrontation earlier in the arc.
    • Contrast this with the complete lack of build-up for Zoro vs King.
  • King is most focused on killing Momonosuke
    • Sanji rescued Momonosuke from King already (thus thwarting his plans)
    • Sanji may have headed to rescue Momonosuke in the latest chapter
• Marco told King that he's up against the New Generation.
  • Marco is himself not a part of this generation.
• The Strawhats seem set to defeat Kaido's executives:
  • The Tobi Roppo appear to be matched against Strawhats:
    • Usopp vs Pay Pay
    • Nami vs Ulti
    • Robin & Brook vs Black Maria
    • Franky vs Sasaki
    • Jimbe vs Who's Who
  • The Calamities might also be matched against Strawhats:
    • Chopper vs Queen
      • With Assistance?
    • ??? vs Jack
      • Yamato?
    • ??? vs King
      • Sanji?
• Sanji vs Queen is looking unlikely
  • Queen's conflict and grudge seem to be much stronger against Chopper and Drake
    • Chopper
      • Chopper has neutralised his viruses twice in a row
      • His subordinates betrayed him to protect Chopper
    • Drake
      • He has already tried to kill Drake
  • Queen mentioned eliminating Sanji in the same breath as eliminating Zoro. He didn't really give eliminating Sanji any special consideration.
  • Sanji and Queen haven't had any confrontation or any real build-up for a fight later down the line
    • In fact, Zoro has had more of a confrontation with Queen
  • Sanji and Queen are only superficially similar opponents with mainly meta reasons suggesting a confrontation between them.
    • The arguments for Sanji vs Queen are the same for Zoro vs King, and as mentioned I don't think Zoro will fight King.

As far as I can tell, unless you think Zoro is facing King as his main opponent, you shouldn't expect Queen to be Sanji's main opponent. Those who claim that Zoro's main opponent is Kaido, but that Sanji's main opponent is Queen are being pretty inconsistent.

Provided that Zoro's main opponent in this arc is in fact Kaido, Sanji facing King is more likely than Sanji facing Queen.

The main caveats that are holding me back from endorsing Sanji vs King are:

• There's still a significant chance that Zoro defeats King
  • While there's no in-story reason to expect Zoro to defeat King, there are very strong meta reasons to expect Zoro to defeat King:
    • Zoro has always faced the strongest subordinates of the arc antagonist
      • Cabaji
      • Nyaban Brothers
      • Hatchan
      • Daz Bones
      • Ohm
      • Kaku
      • Ryuma
      • Hyouzou
      • Monet
      • Pica
    • Zoro has faced all formidable swordsmen opponents
      • Cabaji
      • Mihawk
      • Hatchan
      • Ohm
      • Captain T-Bone
      • Kaku
      • Ryuma
      • Hyouzou
    • A non-Zoro Strawhat defeating the arc antagonist's strongest subordinate is unprecedented
    • A non-Zoro Strawhat defeating a formidable swordsman opponent is unprecedented
    • In conclusion, Sanji defeating King would require two unprecedented events to happen
• Similarly, there are meta reasons to expect Sanji to defeat Queen
  • Sanji normally defeats the arc antagonist's second strongest subordinate
    • Kuroobi
    • Bon Clay
    • Jabra
    • Absalom
    • Wadatsumi
      • Albeit he shared him with Jinbe
  • Sanji and Queen share some superficial similarities
    • Both of them love women
    • Both of them grieved over the death of Komurasaki
    • Queen seems to be goofy like some of Sanji's opponents
      • Bon Clay comes to mind
    • Queen also uses the power of science to fight
• While it was an offhand comment, Queen seems to have some history with Sanji's father

All the above said, until Zoro is yeeted from the Kaido fight, I find Sanji vs King more probable than Sanji vs Queen. And even if Zoro does leave the Kaido fight to defeat King, Queen still has a much bigger grudge against — and much more build-up for a confrontation with — Chopper/Drake. So even if Zoro ends up fighting King, it's not enough to say that Sanji soloing Queen is now the most likely outcome.
[/spoiler]

 

[ImmaIvanoM]

Zoro/Sanji vs King/Queen

Can you stop grouping Zoro with Sanji... It’s so annoying

 

[T.D.A]

Since the full introduction of the calamities and we got a basic understanding of the Beast Pirates we got a basic understanding of their crew dynamic and strength breakdown:

S - Kaido

A - King/Queen

A minus - Jack

B - Tobi Roppo

C plus - Numbers

C - Headliners

From their some of the matchups for the war seemed obvious:

Luffy vs Kaido

Zoro/Sanji vs King/Queen

Weaker straw hats vs Tobi Roppo


This still seems to be how the fights are going to breakdown. And how is that going to go down?

Hawkins uses his limit break card to strengthen king and queen. With this King finishes of Marco, meanwhile Queen annihilates drake and the rest of the performance hall. With the samurais down, King will realize that the only leader left that matters is Monkey D. Luffy and Queen goes up to finishes off the pirates who broke out of Udon.

King attacks weakened Luffy who doesn’t have haki only for Zoro to block him, then Queen attacks the allied pirates like Law or Kid where Sanji comes in and stops him.

Luffy regains his haki and goes into his new strongest form and attacks Kaido.

Zoro will always attack the swordsman who try and get in his captains way, Sanjis fights always start with him stopping an enemy from attacking allies.

Just because it seems to go in a different way; Oda isn’t going to break his basic matchup formula.

Oda's already deviated from your 'predictable' matchups though lol.

5 SNs vs Kaido and BM is already happening.
Oden says the Worst Gen will be taking down Kaido.

 

[Finalbeta]

Can you stop grouping Zoro with Sanji... It’s so annoying

Based off what is the true question in my opinion...

Why picking him specifically.... they are part of the same crew but that's absolutely not enough.