Outside of Luffy, Kid and Law are the strongest people on Wano at the conclusion of the Onigashima war, not even Zoro (I’m a huge zoro fan), who is probably the fourth strongest, can compare to them. This will be a two part argument, with the first part exploring thew strength of zoro.
Part 1 – Zoro
Zoro struggled against King despite being fully recuperated from the mink medicine, so we cannot use the excuse of the damage incurred on him during the rooftop battle. One can say he was also learning to master Enma, but the reality is that he was FORCED to master Enma otherwise victory was impossible. King was truly a demon in the form of an angel, he represented the hell which Zoro had to conquer in order to overcome the most difficult opponent he’s ever faced in a 1 on 1. King forced a Haki bloom out of Zoro due to Zoro facing imminent death if he was unable to find a way to defeat King.
Let’s look at the facts:
1) King is evidently faster than Zoro in both attack speed and movement speed.
2) King has better defense than Zoro. This is the same attack that Zoro used against Kaido and it was able to cut Kaido’s durable scaled, whereas King was able to take 0 damage by blocking it with his wings, do not ignore the subtle hints that Oda loves to drop.
In this panel, king states that his defensive prowess is more impressive than dinasours and dragons.
In this panel, king once again took zero damage.
3) His physical prowess (attack power) is on par with Zoro. In this page King is seen easily overpowering Zoro, with Zoro even admitting that he cannot defeat him without figuring out King’s secret, but that was only half of the truth, Zoro NEEDED CONQUEROR’S HAKI in order to damage King, I’m not saying that is the only way King can be damaged, but in Zoro’s case, it was the only way that he was able to damage King.
King was willing to be the personification of Hell to serve as the right hand man as the “World’s Strongest Monster”, in order for Zoro to overcome this, he had to become the KING of Hell and be TRULY ready to sacrifice his life by exuding levels of Haki into Enma that he has never done, once he did this, then he was able to damage King and level the playing field. However, this took EVERYTHING out of Zoro. This isn’t downplaying Zoro’s strength in any way, shape or form, if anything, it goes to show the indomitable force that King presented, HOWEVER, despite all of this, King was treated as FODDER by Ryokugyu.
While we truly do not know if he is as strong as an Emperor, we do know that Ryokugyu can without a doubt compete with a Yonko (even if it ends in a loss), it would make no narrative nor logical sense for him not to be able to, besides the fact that Oda has hinted numerous times about Admirals showing no fear in fighting against a Yonko.
Part 2 – Kid and Law
After the display of abilities from Kid and Law, I’m sorry, but they will have zero problems dealing with King in their Awakened state. First of all, the distance in strength between a Yonko and their first Commander is immeasurable due to the difference in strength. Katakuri and King are both monsters, but Wano has showed us there are tiers to character strength beyond what we could have ever imagined.This image perfectly captures how easily Big Mom overpowered Kid and Law before they used their awakened powers.
Up to this panel, Big Mom had no discernible damage, however, this instantly changed when Kid and Law were willing to put their lives on the line (a VERY frequent theme seen in this war arc) and use their Awakened powers. This transcended two of the leading faces of the new generation into similar uncharted territory akin to Luffy. This was the first time that Law and Kid were able to damage Big Mom after they left the rooftop.
