When did he say they were close to Ryu's toughness? He said that the situation (can't deal fatal damage without Cleave) was just like with Ryu, but that they don't surpass his toughness.
Let's put our thinking caps on.
Sukuna is physically superior to his own dismantles, which are Ryu's feat. (And said dismantle
still harms him alot, he was bleeding to hell from it man)
A - Sukuna's Black Flash
B - Sukuna's physicals
C - Dismantles
A > B > C
Ryu's best feat is downscaling to
(C) Dismantles, Maki is downsscaling to
(B) Sukuna's physicals and being able to take
(A) Sukuna's Black Flash better than Sukuna thought she could DESPITE seeing and analyzing Ryu, Yuta and Yuji's durability.
A special one would be
D - Cleaves
(D) Cleaves is able to
one shot Ryu... yet it
can't one shot Maki despite Sukuna hitting her in both her torso and face.
Take all of that into account and let's analyze the statement:
Yuji and Yuta by this point wouldn't take any fatal wounds from dismantles like Ryu would so even if they don't
surpass (NOTICE THE WORDING ISN'T THAT THEY DON'T SURPASS NOT DON'T "EQUAL") him in toughness they are indeed
comparable, that's the bare minimum for them, they would be around the same tier of dura as Ryu, otherwise they would take fatal wounds as it is with Kusakabe for example who says he would immediatly die to a dismantle if he didn't protect himself and even if he did he would die if it's point blank.
We see what Sukuna's cleaves do to this Yuji:
Proving the consistency of Cleaves being way superior to dismantles just like it was with Ryu, cleaves can indeed deal fatal wounds to them.
This is maki taking a bunch of cleaves straight to the chest, we see minimal injuries and literally 3 pages after she appears again without any visible issues on her performance or injuries on her chest, alongside later taking one to the face with minimal injuries:
The whole story is indeed telling you that while Yuta and Yuji (
Comparable to Ryu) are on the level of taking damage from dismantles without fatal wounds, Maki is on the level of taking even
cleaves without any fatal wounds and Black flashes with much less issue than them.
And before the "Omg sukuna was weakened" comes again. Here's a
singular cleave from a
WEAKER Sukuna ripping
AWAKENED Yuji's right side of his face off.
TLDR: It is indeed made very clear that Yuta and Yuji's durability are both around Ryu's level while Maki's durability is clearly beyond that with way better feats lol.