User blog comment:AYET/Luffy alone or combined effort/@comment-7614831-20150517173312/@comment-10543621-20150518233540

Basically, just because the Shichibukai hold the same title, it hardly means they command similar strength. Like you mentioned, I think the status has more to do with reputation than strength to be honest. Buggy is the perfect example.

Even among the Shichibukai roster, I've always felt that infamy played a larger role than power. Sure with power comes infamy, but most of the shichibukai had some sort of reputation going on for them. Hancock was the empress of Amazon Lily, which I'm sure is famous enough as it is. Her first pirate expedition earned her a bounty close to supernova status, and she's known as the most beautiful woman in the world. That's surely enough of a reputation. Mihawk holds the title of strongest swordsman in the world. Doffy was the ruler of an influencial nation in the new world. Jinbe probably holds the title as the strongest fishman alive and sucessor to Fisher Tiger, who's infamy everyone should be familiar with. Blackbeard knew he had to do something flashy to gain the position of Shichibukai, and his capture of Ace served as an excellent claim to fame. Not sure what Croco did, but he's a Logia, so that's always a plus. Kuma probably had a pretty good reputation as well as the 'Tyrant' although we're again not so sure what he did. For Moriah, I guess it might be his status as the so called rival of Kaido. Similarly, Law gained the status through his act of beheading 100 pirates? Or was it 1000?

Still I think it's obvious that there are stronger candidates among the Shichibukais. Doffy and Mihawk are definitely up there at the top. We're still not quite shown how powerful Hancock is though. Kuma being a full cyborg now might be a bit pointless to put in the discussion. But we've definitely seen that Moriah might count as a weaker one, and Traffy definitely was no where compared to Doffy.