User blog comment:LuffyPirateKing/Luffy and his belly/@comment-3119203-20121021172134

If he got another Devil Fruit, that would be incredibly lame. I think that it's a lot better when someone uses a seemingly useless ability and their own strength to defeat someone who seems invincible. Doesn't it also just seem so anticlimatic when he trains for two years and then gets a new fruit that makes those two years look like nothing? I think that in the end, Luffy's willpower and determination will trump the power-hungry Blackbeard. Luffy's not gonna stoop to his level of using multiple DF's. That just doesn't seem like his style.

While I agree that Luffy was defeated pretty easily right off the bat, and his fight with Hody was sub-par, I think that he will get stronger. Remember, at the beginning of the series, he had a tough fight against Arlong and even struggled with Kuro for a while. Compare that to the events on the Grand Line: defeating two Shichibukai, defeating the strongest member of CP9 in history, and fighting a variety of powerful opponents at Marineford and Impel Down. Sure, Luffy isn't that great now, but he can still get better, and I think that that is exactly what is going to happen.