Should titles in one piece be taken into consideration?

[Megavert56]

I was in an argument on whether whitebeard is the strongest pirate in history, and then someone showed me this from the Ace Novel:



Does this mean that titles in one piece can't be taken into consideration? And yes it's canon, and I argued that it's an opinion, not a fact from an unreliable source, but this would just mean that in-verse, Whitebeard's title just is based on the way he lived his life making him the "Strongest Pirate". So why would it be considered as him being the strongest out of the verse? And would this apply to Mihawk as well?

 

[Crabwhale]

I wouldn't say titles are very good at conveying power in this verse, no. At least, not beyond a very general level. They're mostly meant for hype.

Take Whitebeard and Kaido: one is the Strongest Man, the other is the Strongest Creature. Based on this, you would think Kaido is the strongest. Except Kaido straight up considers at least a prime Whitebeard on par with himself.

Then there's Whitebeard vs Roger. It's generally well accepted that the crown of Pirate King is won with strength, and thus Roger could be considered the strongest. However Whitebeard, Garp, Shiki and Rocks have all battled against Roger, and at least in the former two examples we know they've never outright lost.

The takeaway here is that past a certain point, all the top tiers of the verse become relative, and who wins between canonically in a duel to the death is a complete toss up.