User blog comment:Kaido King of the Beasts/The Potholes of One Piece/@comment-3351696-20140817031810/@comment-1595565-20140817032602

You sort of miss the point of it. The fighting was meant to showcase just a bit of what the crew had done during the break. Anyone who expected them to unleash everything in the first fight was foolishly kidding themselves. Movies don't show the climax five minutes in, and mangaka don't showcase the full extent of a character's abilities in what is (for the reader) an exhibition fight. A lot of the arc was for the reader's behalf rather than the characters.

The rest of it was meant to set up the basis for the upcoming reverie plot and world build.