This is going to be a very controversial thing to say but I've been thinking about this for that past couple of days and I 've come ot the conclusion that Crocodile is probably the most interesting Warlord from the original seven. The reason I say this is because out of the original seven he's origin and how he looked in the past have been kept a mystery far longer than anyone else now. Also, I find it interesting that despite where he was placed in the series he is ,unless I'm mistaken, the first character we meet that knows about devil fruit and has mastered logia regen. I know a lot of people,especially some mods say that Croc's whole explanation about mastery relates to his extra ability, the power to dehydrate. This however I believe is false, because assume Blackbeard had his powers for little more than a week, those "extra abilities" are something you get upon eating the fruit, they're the default powers. No what Crocodile was talking about was the ability to shift into an elemental state on reflex, which at the time, was not in the series. One could say Ace was on Croc's level but, that bar scene, regardless what the majority has said was too out of place not to mean something.
Now that I've gone on a devil fruit rant, here are some other things that make Croc interesting.
- His knowledge of Ancient weapons
This seems to be a very close nit topic in the One Piece world, and I understand that he had a big organization, but even so how does someone acquire that type of information? It just doesn't seem like someone like him would know something as high class as that regardless of who his contacts might be.
- Knowledge of Devil fruits
I know I touched on this earlier but I find it strange that he knows so much about devil fruits, despite not having any relation to Vegapunk or associates of Vegapunk. Now am I saying you have to be in order to know about Devil fruits? No but he knew what an "Awakened Zoan" was, that has to raise so questions, how does he know that? Where would someone like him acquire something, secretive like that? Also throughout the series we've seen three objects that have eaten fruits, two of which belonging to factions that would have great knowledge of devil fruits, the World government, due the their accessibility to Vegapunk and Doflamingo's family due the accessibility to Caesar Clown but how did Croc get Lasso? Again the info reach of his group cannot be that great, so another mystery.
- Connections to Ivankov and Whitebeard
The beef he had with WB could be drawn up to him losing a fight, but again we don't know. Invankov's connection is a weird one, because one would assume that he, once was a female, especially seeing as how the face of the young adult version of him in chapter zero is not shown, all the viewer see is the back of his head. Which implies that either his entire body from back then has to remain a secret, or just his face. The child version of him is also ambiguous, perhaps intentionally?
I know all of this has been said up before, I was just thinking about it recently and wanted to express my thoughts.