Ok, I get what you are saying. Yet it is true that rankwise Alabasta Croco as a shiki was for sure better than any CP9 not called Lucci.. yet powerwise since Alabasta Croco was defeated by gearless Luffy and Luffy absolutely needed the gears to even beat somebody like Blueno... Croco falls short. We can discuss that actually after an hard fight he could have maybe beat Blueno even without gears and say he is still below Alabasta Croco (but we already have to stretch it) yet people like Kaku or the wolf zoan guy are sure as hell stronger than Alabasta Croco. So I get your vision but imo it doesn't work like that, Oda simply readjust stuff without any care for logic if the story needs it like Croco spending weeks/months in prison after gearless Luffy beat him but suddenly he become a relevant player in the Marineford battlefield and be comparable somewhat to that emd of pre time skip Luffy and the other people in his Impel down gang.
[automerge]1737921427[/automerge]
This is about that panel where he says the CDs could do nothing about him? Yet we see fodder CD guards there, if they really wanted to do something they could have just sent an admiral and we saw how fast Aokiji stopped him at Punk Hazard. The holy knights most likely didn't even exist in Oda mind at that point. So, knowing the real WG strength, it is safe to say the CD didn't even try, if it wasn't maybe some fodder CD that sent just fodder guards like in the panel close to Doffy saying the CD could do nothing.