@semil:
she has a kind of pure or naive conviction that, coupled with her resemblance, makes her progression very interesting.
"pure naive conviction" – Nice! Good way to put it.
@Don:
So to close here the full circle it would be more of the kind that they clash for a few strikes and then she will admit that he deserves his title and the swords..(also Zoro cant rly fight someone looking like Kuina with his full strength until they
re both close to die.)
Don Q – I think you're missing a big part of her character: she wants respect, not swords. Yes, she has a near-fanatical love for swords and hates to see them in the hands of evil people etc, but the key thing is that Zoro disrespected her -- not that he's just another bad guy with some good swords. He told her that he couldn't accept the fact that she was alive [in contrast to Franky, who told Robin, much later on in the story, that "it's never a sin just to be born"].
For about thirty minutes when they first met, he treated her respectfully. He picked up her glasses for her, was impressed with her ability to defend herself, let her select a sword for him (and was ready to let her select a second one for him as well, before Matsu brought in Yubashiri), and Zoro even – and this is practically unthinkable for a guy like Zoro -- did something akin to flirting with her ("do you intend to take this sword, too?").
Then as soon as she discovered that he was lying to her about who he was, their tentative friendship shattered. Why? Because it made her question the sincerity of everything else he'd done and said.
So she challenged him to a fight, and instead of giving her a fair fight, he just toyed with her. Since then, she's chased him for a single reason: to get a fair fight. So it's not about his swords now, or ever. It's about regaining the respect from him that she thought she once originally had.
@Sage:
I am expecting her to have the craziest control over the Haki + Sword(s) combination and give Zoro a fight he will never forget. Win or Lose…he won't forget it.
As a sort of parallel to Coby then. Interesting.
@Don:
I think it`s more important to make her accept him as a swordmaster than to rly fight her.
I think it's the opposite. That the psychological battle will be the hardest because it's self against self. Also, that he needs to accept her as a swords person, not vice versa – because accepting her will be like accepting that Kuina could have reached her level, too. Remember, he's doing this for himself and Kuina. So to deny that a woman could be a serious threat is also to deny that Kuina could have reached that level, too.
Or something...
EDIT:
(sorry, losing my train of thought, I'm trying to do two things at once here)