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

I feel this fight hasn't reflected upon Luffy so much as Doflamingo. In addition to what Kaido King of the Beasts has already stated below, I think there has been a long depreciation of the shichibukai and their abilities since Luffy set a sort of precedent by defeating them; certainly since the fight against Gecko Moria. Whilst the encounters involving Kuma and Boa Hancock have proved that they are potentially just as on-form as Doflamingo, Mihawk and Jinbei, they can hardly be considered proper arc fights like this one. If anything, this fight and Doflamingo have reestablished why the government need the shichibukai in order to maintain balance, in exchange for impunity from all the naughty things they get up to. Yes, there's an argument to be said that Buggy's inclusion hardly supports the high standard implicated here, but the government were desperate to find replacements and he at least fitted the minimum requirement of a "great" reputation, if not great strength.

Employment criteria aside, however, Doflamingo's adept useage of his (awakened) Devil Fruit powers, Haki and certainly his unnatural endurance (I thought for sure that Law's Gamma Knife was the end of it, but Doflamingo has shown a level of durability not, in my mind, seen since Whitebeard at Marineford) infer he is unusual, even in the New World. Seeing the difference between how Crocodile and Doflamingo handled Jozu at Marineford suggests at the disparity between the jaded shichibukai Luffy had already faced and the ones he and the others (Zoro and Mihawk) will be facing from here on out. And ultimately, I think it is this disparity between the dispirited Crocodile and Moria and the more 'active' shichibukai which have no doubt cast such a critical light upon Luffy's abilities in this arc. That aside I ought to answer this post's question, and speaking of Whitebeard, the idea of a combined effort to take down an opponent reminds me of his death at the hands of Blackbeard and his crew which stands out in the series as something of a terribly cowardly act. Of course, whilst Luffy and his allies would never act in quite the same way, it would nonetheless feel like a similar gesture.