User blog comment:Fliu/Chapter 957: More Info on Rocks/@comment-43942467-20190928000009/@comment-108.83.222.210-20190928032952

With all due respect, you underestimate the warlords. They might not be as powerful as the marines but they are strong pirates in their own right. Let us say that they were to challenge the Yonko, would they lose yes, but they would significantly weaken the crew they are facing and the marines would lose nothing that they were not intending to get rid of eventually. They would essentially weaken an enemy without losing anything at all and that function alone would prove them valuable enough to keep. Let us say for a moment that the marines and Yonko were to fight, then both sides would lose a great deal of people with no guarantee that they would get the result that they desire. Having another faction involved would be to the advantage of the side that has it since that would put things more in their favor. Besides that, they serve as a deterrent for some of the less powerful pirates because they deal with any who might end up being competition from becoming a problem in the future. If they had taken the warlords out of the Marineford arc then they likely would have ended up with more casualties then they suffered. There seems to be this idea going around that the warlords are no different then any other simple pirates and that any marine would be able to defeat them like this (snap). That is not the case. They are all pirates who have earned their reputations and they will not likely be easy to take down even with their replacements that they are so confident in. I expect that we have yet to see the true power of what any of them are capable of and they will show that soon enough.