I believe Mihawk has never lost.

He will be a parallel to Kuina in that sense.

His entire character is predicated on excellence and perfection.

He has mastered his craft and learned to distill strength to its very essence.

Take making a black blade for instance. A feat so incredibly difficult it’s been done once in history.

And Mihawk not only recreates it, but does it even better.

Where Ryuma only made a great grade blade, into a black blade, Mihawk did the same with a Supreme grade. Making Yoru the strongest sword in history, with no equal.

Even when recreating a feat done once in history, he isolates himself in a class alone.

He has no need for others. 

No crew, no cook, no need for any help at anything.

Where characters like Luffy, Shanks and even Buggy show the ability to gather others around them and gather strength through numbers and a crew.

Mihawk represents the opposite. 

He is the antithesis to the strength that Luffy and the others show.

The need for nothing and no one else, solitary excellence.

Not a single loss to his name.

His body treated as an extension of his blade. 

A nick on his blade equivalent to a scar on his body, a mark of shame.

He agreed with Zoro that defeat would be an irreversible setback. 

For the crew, defeat actually became a catalyst for growth. 

Even Shanks says the same thing in his speech to luffy after Ace’s death.

That defeat is what makes a man and you grow from it.

This ideology is where Mihawk and Shanks differ, where as Mihawk has never known defeat and refuses to accept it, only at the cost of his life.

Shanks sees it as an opportunity to grow and learn from.

But Mihawk is so strong he’s never known that. He can’t even understand the concept of growth through defeat, because he’s never experienced it.

Like Zoro, he believes defeat can only come at the hands of death, and he’s still breathing.

Mihawk stands at the pinnacle of strength in the story, but at the cost of his humanity

A lot of the community complains constantly about him never doing anything, calling him a fraud etc. I genuinely believe it’s a massive disconnect between this community and its understanding of this character.

He is literally too strong for anyone alive to give him a tough time in a fight. And this sounds absolutely impossible and inconceivable to most of the community.

But this unfathomable strength, is the explanation for his boredom. The reason he won’t fight Shanks, or anyone else. Is because it wouldn’t satisfy him. It wouldn’t be the challenge he desires. It would literally be boring..

And so all these years after Shanks lost his arm, he is left peerless and consumed by boredom.

A man at the pinnacle can have no equal, for at the summit is a seat for only one.

And with no one left to call his rival, loneliness is born

Mihawk is Odas meditation on absolute strength and the isolation that it breeds.

The Unrivaled

Mihawk mini Theory/Analysis