User blog comment:Kaido King of the Beasts/Chapter 870: There and Back Again/@comment-3529684-20170630005707/@comment-24850639-20170630185547

You're kidding me....Sanji's move should count as "hitting" Big Mom because he used his foot and not his shin? Luffy and Sanji's intentions weren't to HURT Big Mom. Big Mom was about to hurl a massive explosion of energy at Reiju, and they both stepped in to defend Reiju from said attack. Big Mom is  YONKO, and she is incredibly huge at that. Luffy needed to increase the surface area of his fist to sufficiently block the attack, hence Gear Third. In the same vein, Sanji isn't going to successfully deflect an attack from a YONKO just using a plain old shin block....anything less than a named attack wasn't going to work on a full-powered attack from someone of Big Mom's calibur.

Furthermore, I fail to see what makes Sanji's kick count as "clashing" with hers when the kick wasn't even aimed at Big Mom's intended point of impact. Yeah he used Diable Jambe...HE BETTER! Her freaking fist is on fire! Luffy increased the size of his fist to absorb the full impact of the blast, while Sanji attacked from a different angle in order to parry the attack away from Reiju. If he wanted to "hit" Big Mom, don't you think he would have aimed somewhere else?