User blog comment:AYET/Luffy alone or combined effort/@comment-7614831-20150517173312/@comment-10543621-20150520061120

Yeah definitely the scenes from Marineford were hardly enough to determine the relative strength of each of the Shichibukais. But you've basically got the gist of what I was trying to say. That fight did give us some idea of their strength, and more importantly, the fact that Croco isn't as weak as people tend to believe simply based on the fact that he was the first Shichibukai to be defeated by Luffy early on in the story.

We have to remember though, that it took Luffy 3 tries to finally defeat Croco, and if it weren't for Robin saving Luffy's life, Luffy wouldn't even have gotten the chance at the 2nd and 3rd attempt, and most certainly wouldn't have been able to find out about Croco's DF weakness. Croco was still leagues above Luffy even though Luffy did eventually come out victorious. To me, Croco fell prey to his own over-confidence and underestimation of Luffy. That is a very important point considering how Doffy himself said that he will be sure not to underestimate Luffy like others have done.

We definitely haven't seen the extent of what people like Hancock and Mihawk and do. Even Kuma isn't exceptionally clear. Doffy, we're seeing the full extent of his abilities now. Mihawk, although we haven't seen him fight all out yet, his reputation clearly puts him at the top level. Being the world's strongest swordsman, in a world where many fighters claim to be swordsman is no mean feat. That and he considered Shanks a rival, and even supposedly lost interest in dueling Shanks after he lost his arm suggests that Mihawk is definitely on par with Shanks. What more do we need?