Of course, there is a difference. The win streak showed that he was a formidable opponent. The win against Diamante while handicapped showed how much so.
You don't just show a characters full strength in his hype right?
My school of thought regarding that was always "show, don't tell". I just cannot find it in myself to say that somebody is formidable opponent because he defeated x number of nameless, featureless guys.
It is something I consider an empty hype.
I would agree to the fight being a little disappointing. Diamante himself was impressive to me.
But the format of the fight along with the over-confident underling theme of Dressrosa made the fight less intense than usual.
Diamante… hmph. You see, the problem with Diamante is that we have already seen opponents more impresive then him. Multiple times.
For one of the top commanders of powerful Shichibukai crew, he is a let down.
I disagree on him not being effective. He was not effective in his fight, but he was extremely effective in his primary objective - "Keep the nuisances away from the King".
Pica never really seeked Zoro for a fight. it was Zoro who was trying to stop Pica from doing whatever he wanted. And Zoro was failing for the most part.
So much that Robin actually commented on Zoro's ineffectiveness at dealing with Pica already.
Not really. Except for stopping Zoro, Pica has failed to stop anyone from coming up. So yes, he is not that effective in that either.
He managed to slow them down a bit, but not actually stop any of them.
Sure. He could have done that. But Pica already needed to have control over vast areas of Lands for plot reasons.
Add the powers you mentioned to give a good challenge to Zoro, and the forum would have been filled with posts saying how overpowered the character is.Pica was made weak because he was extremely good at his job. Being a good foe against Zoro with all that power would either have resulted in not using his strongest moves to get defeated(ala Crocodile) or becoming too overpowered of a Character .
He already has all of those powers.
And I'm pretty nobody complained that Mr. 1 was too overpowered, and therefore bad.
If anything, it would have put down complaints that Oda is shilling Zoro too much after timeskip. Which he is, btw.
So the fact that Zoro got opponent that is seemingly powerless against him and at the same most visually impressive enemy of the arc thus far… what does it tell you?
And he has all that power already. He was established to be a swordsman, is the only guy besides Vergo thus far to shown full body haki form.
Mere fact that Zoro would be challanged is being too overpowered of a character for you? That sounds like a bias.