@Captain:
As much as I hate to make a point for Joyboy, the scene where Big Mom was ejected from the Sunny and the one where she was rolled off the Performance Floor both show how the regular Straw Hats can buy time against an Emperor without necessarily needing the ability to deal direct damage.
The thing that basically everyone complained about because it made her into a joke and took away a lot of her credibility? That was also before the fighting proper started and everything was being juggled around.
I enjoyed Franky plowing his bike into her face, that was fun, but at this point in the fight for Kaidou to not just use go dragon form and use that wind slicer attack from the air and murder everyone or sever limbs like he did against the scabbards would just be really asinine. Luffy tanking everything he has is bad enough. Kinemon getting killed and then getting back up because he happened to never be re-assembled properly was funny enough to get away with it, but really weak sauce overall given it was his second revive.
Zoro was crippled and broke all his bones after enduring a few minutes around Kaidou and hitting him with his strongest move.
Yeah, it'd be a cool moment for the crew to stand up against him and try to hold him off. But Kaidou, even with the drunk mode and Luffy rubberizing him a couple chapters ago, hasn't been treated thus far as a silly villain you can get away with gags around unless you're Luffy. DOing a gag stall at this point would just wreck any drama, and doing a serious standoff would by all rights wreck the crew with serious permanent damage. At this point, even tired out, he should absolutely be clobbering and one shotting all of them, considering he initially knocked out Luffy in a single blow.
I'm all for the nonsense standoff emotional moment, but Oda's already killed the tension over and over again and kept everyone alive and moving when they shouldn't be. It hits a breaking point… and we need the crew able to walk so they can do whatever this final action requires of them. They had their moments to show their resolution and faith in Luffy multiple times along the way, especially Nami, they declared those things... and thats all they'd be able to do against Kaidou. Or what, they declare "I'll hold him off!" then brace to take a deadly hit, only for Luffy to intervene and cut it short? The same way it already worked out for Nami against Ulti with Big Mom doing all the work? They can't do much meaningful at this point, so better that they stay conscious to do other things.