Chapter 1100 came out this Sunday, wow. 1100 chapters in. 100 chapters PAST chapter 1000. Just an insane amount of content for one series. Anyways, something funny I noticed, in the chapter is that when Kuma becomes the new warlord they say he replaced someone.
Some people are saying this is in reference to Jimbei but I really don't think so. He was a warlord up to Marineford, which is several years after the time this chapter takes place, so he, in this panel, is still a warlord. Look all of them are counted to total to seven
So who did Kuma replace? I initially thought it was Shanks maybe? It could explain in part the amount of clout he has with the Gorosei, which the arc is heavily expanding upon. Maybe it could explain how he amassed his territory before becoming an Emporer. But
This panel shows that this takes place when Luffy is about a teenager, nearing the age he set off to be a pirate give or take a year to a couple months. And by this time Shanks has been an established Emporer for like 10ish years. So if it was Shanks then there would be like a 12 year gap where the WG just didn't have a 7th Warlord. Which makes no sense to me.
And in the last couple panels Moria was already past his prime, which means he's made the Zombies, which means he's already collected the corpses of notable Rocks Pirates like Captian John, which means the former Rocks pirates we know are all ruled out (Shiki is MIA, Whitebeard is literally in the panel as an Emporer and so is Big Mom and Kaido. Glorosia is there, Stussy is in the current timeline a cohort of a warlord, Silver Axe is also a Moria zombie).
EXCEPT ONE.
Maybe it's Wangzhi? (Ochoku). Because in the current time of the manga we know he was the former owner of Full-o-lead Island. I'm guessing that's how he acquired the territory once owned by his captian, and somehow he fell out of grace with the government??