You think One Piece went fully linear? Or do nerds just act like it because they can't comprehend not having a linear ranking?
There must be hypothetical ones later than Perona, because armament haki was barely a thing until post-skip. Eg Franky has a better chance against Magellan than someone stronger than him who has to fight by touching his poison.
One Piece really doesn't lean that heavily into it. Yes, matchups can matter to an extent but the scaling is generally straightforward. It isn't HxH or JoJo.
If we go solely on hypotheticals I can see Law faring a lot better than Luffy did against Cracker, perhaps.