User blog comment:GrilloSama/Commander Thatch/@comment-111.220.143.165-20171107084141

Personally I think thatch was an okay-strong fighter. For people commenting how thatch went down too easy I'd like to say that as reader we know blackbeard is a piece of shit but for WB he was another brother; a weak brother too. Imagine say Ussop stabbing sanji or zoro; none of them would have seen it coming. Not to say that blackbeard is weak though; he was somehow able to scar shanks without a devil fruit however I think that had more to do with his cunningness. WB would have no reason to trust Shanks and believe him if Shanks had decided to inform WB about BB's duality.

Now for strength; I think that Thatch was a haki specialist and a knife weilder on a similar strength to at least crocodile. It's hard for me to place any WB pirate in terms of strength. E.g: Marco is assumed to be first mate but was one-shotted by Garp whereas it took a former fleet admiral, an admiral and a vice admiral to take out one of kaido's right hand men, Jack. I think this is because generally all WB pirates were nerfed during their fights since they fought before we knew anything about haki so if anyone was a haki specialist or even user they were not highlighted. I can't imagine a pirate group like WB's without having one or two armament haki specialists on par with katakuri's armament.