Shanks’ fight with BB

[SSJ2]

So we know about Shanks’ scar that he received from Blackbeard. We know given his conversation with Whitebeard that he considers Blackbeard to be incredibly strong, and warns Whitebeard to call off Ace. Shanks being a Yonko and one of the strongest characters in the series doesn’t really line up with this imo. Shanks has no Devil Fruit. Blackbeard’s Yami Yami no Mi relies on the opponent having a Devil Fruit. So Shanks is judging Blackbeard solely based on his combat abilities it would seem. However... as we’ve seen against Ace, and even Luffy to an extent, his pure combat skills seem terrible. Ace was dominating him from what I recall. How would this level of power be enough to make Shanks fear him?

 

[Captain Cadaver]

To be fair on Blackbeard, his current fighting style is likely a lot more overconfident in taking on an opponent as his DF ability makes damage dealt to him irrelevant unless it's Admiral or Yonko tier. The BB who fought Shanks likely had far more of an opportunistic and sneaky fighting style that would've helped him quickly kill Thatch.

On top of that, we aren't given a solid timeframe of when Shanks gained his scars, especially with his face not being shown clearly during Roger's execution and Yasopp's recruitment. He may have already gained them before he started the Red Haired Pirates, when he was highly inexperienced. That would go against him hyping up Teach's power, but he could've been using it as a way of scaling Teach's potential much as Kuma did for Luffy when telling Moriah about how he beat Lucci. Teach has been treat as the antithesis and dark equivalent of Luffy since his introduction, so characters fearing his potential even more so than his current power is expected.

 

[Warmmedown]

Maybe BB caught him somewhat offguard, but Shanks hit him back and BB took it relatively well, so Shanks knew Ace wouldn't be able to do enough to stop BB.