Do you really intend to put Mihawk above Admirals...?
I'm not the only one
I'd disagree. A solo fight makes it even harder to kill WB than a war. Do remember we never even saw Old Whitebeard go all out. He started battle after taking a Damn sword to the chest. Then two magma rockets, and a plethora of bullets, cannons, and sword wounds. The numbers were ridiculous.
You put a man like that out in front of one opponent and he honestly doesn't lose.
Mihawk is certainly a later stage villain, but look at this logically...
1. Zoro has to beat Mihawk OR Shilliew were it to turn out Shilliew beats Mihawk.
A) Mihawk cannot cut diamond
B) Shilliew takes Jozu's fruit: you follow me....
C) Zoro cuts diamond: truly the greatest Swordsmen
2. The final battle will be against the Marines, once Luffy is PK.
3. Thus the final enemies are the Admirals and Marines.
4. If Mihawk is above the admirals... Who's going to challenge the SH's?!
A) Luffy > Zoro
B) Sanji is basically equal with Zoro
If the M3 are at levels defined as above the Admirals... Marineford Part II is gonna be a joke.
Marine HQ would be the frosting on their Murder Cake.
Besides, fight wise WB has more scale. He sent MF and the land around it shaking. Mihawk's greatest feat so far is cutting a wave WB used.as a declaration of war AKA: not even full strength. There's no question of stamina. WB took a sword to the chest, magma bullets to the face and half his brain, 42ish cannon blasts, stab wounds to make a blanket of marines on his chest. And he was STILL just about the strongest on the field.
WB > Mihawk
At best: Mihawk is on admiral level, but he isn't above it.
this here could be a great argument IF you didn't overlook something very important
Old WB<<Prime WB
Old WB>Admirals
Roger>=Prime WB
Luffy is one day gonna>=Roger
that means that the Admirals you describe as the last enemy are gonna be a cake walk, so we can assume that the admirals as tehy are now (or at least were in the war) are NOT gonna be the final enemy, it is either gonna be a powered up version of them but most likely also new members and Kong and maybe the Gorosei
also
Old Rayleigh<<Prime Rayleigh
Old Rayleigh=Kizaru at the time of the war
Zoro will eventually>=prime Rayleigh
also Zoro will eventually>=Mihawk
so basically at the time Zoro surpasses Mihawk and is the PK's first mate (same as Rayleigh) he will be on about prime Rayleigh level, and to do that the one he needs to surpass is Mihawk (as Zoro is a swordsman) ... so it isn't all that unreasonable to assume that Mihawk is>Admirals
also Mihawk has a very impressive feat (duels with Shanks) and an insane amount of Hype, not to mention how secretive Oda is being about him ... kinda the same as with only a few other characters (none of which are Admirals) Garp, Shanks, Dragon, Mihawk ... before you say that doesn,t matter, it's a manga OFC it matters
there are quite a lot of ppl who would say the top 3 in OP atm are Dragon, Shanks and Mihawk (if we ignore the possibilities of Kong and the Gorosei), but Akainu, BB and such are eventually gonna worm their way up there