@Kaido:
Thing is, though, we have already seen Kaido throw his weight around with the intention of becoming Pirate King. That's the entire reason why he invaded Wano and why Jack invaded Zou. With Big Mom having a Road Poneglyph, either Kaido has an unusual relationship with her or he has no guarantee of success against her, and I'm leaning considerably towards the latter.
Well, Wano isn't the turf of any other Yonkou, and that's the real point. He can throw his weight around where others of significant threat won't follow, since those who have the power to give him pause require more careful planning and whatnot, so that's not exactly a good comparison. And like I said, it could be that he's in the process of targeting another Yonkou and just hasn't gotten all the steps prepared yet. He just lost a major supplier so that's got to set him back considerably.
As for those examples…is it particularly fair or accurate to compare an entire arc's worth of character material compared to 3 chapters? Regardless, Big Mom scraping her knees actually does indicate quite a bit about her strength, considering A) Those are the worst injuries she's ever been indicated to sustain, and B) She had to be considerably mentally impacted in order to weaken like that. In contrast, Kaido has a massive scar on his chest and has lost 7 times.
I'm just saying, you wouldn't expect a Yonkou at their peak to still suffer from such a weakness and Kaido probably got that scar before he ascended to his lofty position (if not that would seriously call into question his capability as a Yonkou). It's not like Luffy's never lost a fight before but look where he stands now. You don't really expect Kaido, having fallen from a sky island and failing to kill himself with the impact, to show the same kind of weakness as Big Mom's unstable emotions if even in a suicidal mood, he's unfazed.
I'm not going to drag on this conversation here because it's off-topic and can easily go into tiny semantics, so feel free to message me if you wanna continue talking about this. But there definitely is a lot of unknown factors that'll play in the downfalls of Kaido and Big Mom, and some of which that I buy into, such as Kaido being taken down through group effort and Big Mom not directly meeting her fall at Luffy's hands, may or may not come into play. But given that any kind of gap between Kaido and Big Mom has never been indicated to be more than extremely small, Big Mom will remain a threat to Luffy aside from the possibility of Luffy getting some kind of powerup that lets him curbstomp Kaido by the end (which won't happen)
Yeah, I've said my piece and feel like I defended it well enough anyway. But way more potential for Big Mom's crew to change sides or change attitudes is opening up with the way things are going. Even she herself might undergo a shift in emotion and perhaps become more forgiving or just an entirely different person. For all we know, the remnants of Sunny might become a Homie with all the weird soul crap happening and it might just put itself back together.
@theackwardstation:
Luffy's grand fleet is going to get bigger, but I don't see the other alliances being present in all the future arcs. For example, the Samurais are going to stay in Wano and Minks will go back to Zou. Marco will probably leave to live his own life. Kidd and the other Supernovas probably won't become permanent allies. And I'm not sure for how long Oda wants to keep Law around, but maybe he'll be the only to keep travelling with the Strawhats. Yadda Yadda Yadda.
I don't know how many future arcs there are going to be; now that they're tangling with Yonkou crews, the series has to be winding down. So what little there might be left is probably going to have significant involvement with a vast and varying fleet depending on the arc. But I anticipate ALL of them getting involved in the final big conflict where the revolutionaries go up against the Marines for the ultimate battle over control.
I only see these alliances being formed again in the war against the World Government, even more so because it's too much people to keep in the plot. That's why I think that, against Big Mom, the Strawhats and their grand fleet will have to handle the problem themselves. The justification can be the suddeness of the confront, without enough time to call everybody to help. Or even Luffy can be this prideful guy that wants to defeat a Yonkou alone this time.
Not each and every group affiliated with them beforehand, no, I agree, that would be overkill, but before then? It could be any amount or combination, and even some that we probably wouldn't expect to be part of it. We'll have to wait til Wano to see what kind of groups Kaido has pissed off to get the full scope of Luffy's support network in that conflict. He has to feel humbled enough now just by Big Mom, regardless of all the trouble he's caused her and defeating her top-ranked warrior, to know he can't just go mucking about with the top dogs all by his lonesome. Besides, way too many others want a piece of Kaido to let him have him all to himself. And with Kaido being another giant-sized baddie, and them reuniting with Franky at Wano, why not let the Sunny, with whatever level of damage it's sustained, get repaired and upgraded with its Transformers/Megazord mods to become something even the Shogun has to look up to?
@MrPecans:
I don't think that it will necessarily be an issue either, but Big Mom still has most of her best people fighting under her. She's maybe not going to have Pekoms and she's not going to have the Fishman Pirates, but with Perospero and all of her Sweet Commanders still in tact, I fail to see how she's no longer a threat YET. Obviously, we need to the see the rest of the arc. It's OP, and Big Mom could easily become an ally.
She's lost Chiffon, Pudding, Pekoms, her family's splintered over Katakuri being both a freak and, now, a loser, and Katakuri himself has lost his sense of position and loyalty within the family where his pride overshadowed his duty. Without their leader in the picture if anything permanent does put her out of commission or makes her an entirely different person, there's going to be a power vacuum and everyone knows how chaotic things get when one of those opens up. Kata's the one most likely to assume command over the family after their further humiliation and, hopefully, Big Mom's becoming incapacitated yet. She could very well have a Duval moment where, rather than having a cosmetic alteration at Sanji's hands, it's via his cooking that she becomes a new, better person (I wouldn't count on that, I'm more banking on Katakuri taking the family in a new, better direction without her). In any case there's way more people out there who are in a position to take advantage of her in this condition before she can recover and exact any revenge even if Luffy does defeat Kaido with all the help and then loses all of it after.
But I'm kind of not wanting any of the Yonkou crews to become allies with the good guys. I think a larger, three-way conflict would raise the stakes of something like Marinford so it's not just pirates vs. Marines. Having the Marines vs. Revolutionaries vs. pirate scum alliances would indeed make that a war that would make Marinford look like a minor skirmish. That's kind of where I imagine the Noah ship will carry the whole population of Fishman Island to the surface and the ship will then be stolen by Blackbeard for giving Sanjuan Wolf to have something to ride on instead of just walking on the bottom of the ocean floor (making the metaphorical destruction of Fishman Island since that was supposed to be their sanctuary on the surface until they found a more stable place to settle). A good warmup for Franky's new design on the ship in preparation for that fight would be great to debut there assuming all goes well with the either rebuilding or repair/upgrade of Sunny.