User blog comment:AYET/Talk about chapter 716 and episode 604/@comment-13876472-20130801205854

First things first.

This chapter is a fighting chapter and should be judged as that.It was full of action, and that action was fast and solid. Not only that, we got some amazing fighting scenes and I was surprised by Oda's imagination once again. Generally speaking, amazing chapter!

As for Law vs Fujitora cliffhangers etc, I suppose there is no sane user who expected to see them fight right now, it doesn't fit with Oda's way of storytelling. I suppose that sub-story gonna go forward in chapter 718.

Ok, now I can go on with the chapter.

It was discussed a lot in AP forums and it has been brought here too. There is a fashion with the misuse of the word "fodder". You know what fodder is? The unnamed characters that has been defeated off-screen or on screen by Sai or Funk Brothers. All these scetches who didn't affect the plot at all. Block C fight is plot, and all these big shots are characters who helped the story go further. Fighting Bull is not a fodder character for example, his fight knocked more than 20 participants out of the rings and led Luffy straight to Hajruudin, something that affected critically both the development of Block C and the development of Hajruudin's health.

What do we have in the New  World? We have a sea full of pirates with an average bounty of 100M. We knew it before timeskip and of course we also knew that pre-time skip Luffy could effortessly kick their arses. What do we have in the tournament? A bunch of elite contestants. As pirates they could have bounties even above 300M and they could create pre time skip Luffy trouble as much as ... a Pacifista. Oh wait! We already know what post time skip Luffy can do to a Pacifista. All these characters help Oda to build the environment of New World, but what the fact that they are defeated by Luffy with ease is in absolute match with the info we had collected by now. All match! Thanks Oda for being so careful :)

Characters like Ideo can be considered elite even for New World standards, so were Supernovas when they first entered New World, so could be Luffy if he has entered New World after Marineford War, but Luffy trained to dominate the New World and that's what seperates him and Ideo. He is not just an elite combatant, he is one of these selected few who came to compete against the top of top, the Yonkos. It is natural that Block C is not a match for such a strong pirate. All the Block C? No. All, but Don Chinjao. He is a top tier fighter too and it is the first time that Luffy can compete a top tier fighter.

So, let's go with the most interesting part of this chapter. Luffy vs Don Chinjao. What amazed me the most was their clash. It was stated by Diamante that we are speaking about a clash of CoC users. What does it mean is yet unclear. As it is stated below in the comments, maybe CoC is the reason the weak contestants got blown away, maybe their CoA is just as strong. For sure most of us remembered the clash between Shanks and Whitebeard on Moby Dick, which is the only clash of CoC users that was revealed till now. Even if CoC is imbuing the fighting powers or it is more of a symbol we have every reason to believe that a CoC user is more dangerous than one without it, so the fight we will see in the next chapter gonna be at least remarkable.