after reading a couple of chapters back i don't think this battle is a battle to the death or anything. I think its a battle to show that even without luffy they can still keep themselves allive or even win against strong opponents. Its all started with how lucci threatend that he would take out every single one of luffys crew of course for that and more luffy beat him, but thinking about how moria said luffy had a skill ful crew but it didn't matter as he had the same n as he entered the grand line (new world) they were defeated and killed. Also saying that the same would happened to luffy. We see luffy using wat we already know as attacks which will end up killin him/shorting his life. Ussop even touched on it in this chapter, IF stronger opponents appeared luffy would have to keep doing theses life threatening techniques. Was ussop reealy sayin that they would rely on luffy to beat everyone strong opponent who comes n attacks them? no i think before he was interupted he wanted to say something about how they needed to all get stronger. He would know that luffy couldn't be able to fight each opponent as they arrive. Considerin how they end up in lots of one on one fights.
Then soon after another SHIbickaki appears. Who mentions that Luffy gathered a skillful crew as well. i don't think oda would have mentioned the same thing twice for no reason.
Now the other pirates said that they would help the strawhats fight against him but Zoro said no. i don't think this was his pride talking, in fact i believe he had realised that the fact that they needed, as a crew be stronger, not as strong as luffy to say but strong enough to deal with threats n not die. Zoro must have thought that he must have needed to prove to himself n to the crew or maybe even to luffy that he can protect the crew just as well as luffy can without relyin on others. Considering hes preety much the first mate.
Then cause Zoro was about to die the rest of the crew attempted to fight all failing. This is not about saying Zoro is far greater but, sanji attempted to defend Zoro and got takin out instantly, franky preety much the same way and ussops attack just failed. Zoro was the only one who could last preety much a few minutes maybe on 30 secs +(real time). In the end they all failed.
Also Just to note Kuma choses to avoid Zoro's firsts attacks then deflected the rest. Did he see the attacks as a danger maybe?
Its quite easy to say that its just because they were weakend an that if they fought at full power things would be alot different, But as i think, Zoro has realised from the start they should be able to fight no matter what condition they were in. Luffy's proved this countless times as well as Zoro, and i think Kuma is there to help the rest of the crew realise that no matter what condition their in they never know when they may have to fight. I do think Zoro or maybe a cobinations of crew members will help the over crew survive the attack. CONSIDERING THAT KUMA WAS ORDERED TO BRING BACK MORIA ALIVE (if he was still alive) so we know that the attack isn't deadly.
So my prediction is not seeing Kuma defeated but Zoro and maybe a few others fightin together to defend the crew then escaping just by weaking kuma enough to make a get away dispite his teleportation ablilty he seems to got goin on.