Phillip

Aidan Even with the plot relevance armor, it should have been extremely difficult for Kuma to escape. Assuming that Kuma escapes Mariejois no matter what, Akainu could've used a new move with powerful Haki. He could've used a small scale magma prison to hold Kuma.

All he did was slap his face and throw some fire punches that missed. This was all stuff we saw in Marineford. It's like Luffy trying to fight Kizaru with only using Gear 2. Even with the Mariejois nerf, the expectation was really high from the CDs (and the fans) for The Fleet Admiral to do something significant... But it just didn't happen.

I find it difficult to rank him Yonko level when he couldn't stop Kuma at Mariejois. That was his first feat after being promoted to Fleet Admiral over a decade ago irl time. We don't have feats of him flexing haki or any OP moves post-Marineford.

Meanwhile, Shanks jumped into action and one-shot Kidd. Garp jumped into action (also after over a decade) and flexed haki. Akainu has no recent, relevant feats. And Oda had an opportunity to give him some final saga upscaling in the confrontation against Kuma, but did nothing.