So translating the interview including the parts Sandman left out is headcanon?
The interview is FROM Oda, dumbass.
People keep looking at Sandman and letting it be the end all. But Sandman tried to make it for One Piece and left out that it talks about THREE SEPARATE STORIES.
The Square in RED is the paragraph explanation for all the images on pages 90 and 91: It talks about several projects, some with dragons. The main ones though: SAMURAI VS KNIGHT (Greatest Swordsmen) which is a prototype of Monsters, MONSTERS, and a very small piece about One Piece. Sandman kept leaving the prototype out.
The Square in BLUE is where it talks about stories with dragons and calls Samurai VS Knight a Prototype, with a protag similar to Luffy, and making Ryuma from a supporting to a secondary MC. If you cross reference this with the image on page 91 that it's referring to, you see Ryuma and Romeo, the two Protags/MCs of the prototype. COMMON SENSE says this means Romeo was the MC that was 'similar to Luffy.'
The image itself talks about how they became Sanji and Zoro instead. SO USE COMMON SENSE. Romeo was the 'Luffy-like MC,' Ryuma was the second MC to the PROTOTYPE.
He did not go with this, instead dropped Romeo and kept Ryuma and made MONSTERS.
The concept of Romeo (Romeo was Luffy but dropped) then instead got recycled for Sanji. And the 'rivalry duo,' without the MC part became Sanji and Zoro. That's the only time it talks about One Piece in those few pages.
The Square in ORANGE has nothing to do with the images on 91 or 90, but instead the images on 92 about Corno and such (you can see this in the paragraphs.) This is the part that holds the info about Slam Dunk in reference to his other projects.
Do you understand it now?