Eric's Commentaries

I just gamed this out and i realized a few things. Oda has been preparing Luffy for these fights rather regularly by steadily improving Luffy's mastery of Haki. But he has also positioned Luffy to be reliant on his Devil Fruit gears. If Blackbeard's awakening can more efficiently nullify devil's fruit, then he is setting up luffy to get humbled by having the power that he relies on be taken away before he is ready, then get stomped by blackbeard, just like how he normally fights. And then he has to train to fight with zero reliance on his devil's fruit, probably through seastone cuffs, and rely totally on fully mastering his haki, since, to my knowledge, he has begun the process of fully mastering it, but relied on the devil fruit to make up the gap, and not complete the haki training.