Lucci at that point was more than twice as strong as Jyabura. I am not saying u r wrong that Sanji can beat Lucci, but without comparable speed feats I can't say Sanji out paces Lucci to get the ones shot :|
Twice as strong doesn't mean twice as fast. Or is Usain Bolt the strongest man in the world ?
All the soru and geppou looked pretty comparable. Luffy kept up with Blueno about the same as he did with Lucci. Just on the edge of following them in gear 2.
And there is no comparable speat feat, there is a superior speed feat. Sanji outpaces a fishman underwater.
I doubt Lucci will be Luffy level again, well maybe much later. I see no reason for him to be that strong unless he's going to become main villain again. He will be M3 level I bet for now, but stronger I doubt. As the series goes on even further I believe Luffy should leave his Pre ts enemies behind. It shows real progress imo. But for now I say they are close but once Luffy starts beating top tiers I'm sure the gap will be huge. It would be stupid if every villain Luffy beat and struggled with had his same growth rate especially till EOS.
You don't get what I was saying.
I'm not saying Lucci will be back as a villain, but in shounen if he does he will be stronger than Luffy again. But that wouldn't make any sense because that would make him exponentially stronger than his former self. But his former self trained day an night to reach that level.
That's why it doesn't show progress. Because Morgan and Kuro were also real fights once but now they would get beat by fodder because the powerscale shifted to a new level.
That's why you can't pit someone like franky against Lucci. Because current Franky would curbstomp him according to current feats but realistically Lucci should be superior to Franky at all times.
Oda's power scale (and Naruto and Bleach and Fairy Tail and Dragon Ball and almost every other manga) goes like:
Enemy 1 power 1
Enemy 2 power 10
Enemy 3 power 100
Enemy 4 power 1000
Enemy 5 power 10000
This is fine if you want cool fights and new upgrades and growth, but you can't compare protagonists to the beginning of the story anymore.
Realistic powerscaling would be more like:
Enemy 1 power 100
Enemy 2 power 104
Enemy 3 power 110
Enemy 4 power 112
Enemy 1 power 115
Where you have a steady growth through the arcs, and where enemy 1 even could be a match for enemy 5 who is the big bad. But this is more the stuff you see in books and movies where the hero doesn't evolve every fight.
