@JERK:
Exactly, that's what I'm sayin' too.
This isn't about getting Luffy to the top of the mountain, it's about getting him to the next plateau. The summit is much farther away then some of you seem to think, which I find distrubing given how clearly Oda has emphasized this fact from Shabondy through Marineford.
Yeah, it's a good thing too. If Luffy was able to beat the higher tier characters with only a few months of training, it'd be like Bleach.