Lol what is it with you guys. Of course he won't have the same rivals, but he will have similar ones damnit. If they did a 100 year time skip and you had a good guy character that was going to be Pirate King, and you had other Pirates with the same dream, and the Marines still existed, then you would still have to fill similar roles for those chasing/competeing with him! I don't know why I can't get yall to understand this simple concept, maybe it's because not enough was shown about Roger's past. No matter what, these four roles must be filled:
Rival Good Pirate
Rival Good Marine
Rival Bad Pirate
Rival Bad Marine
While there are a ton of characters in OP, some characters better fill these positions than others from what we have seen at this point, after all we are only half way through Luffy's story and we have only viewed very little of Roger's story from what happened at the end. But anyway, let's make some comparisons:
Rival Roger Luffy
Good Pirate Whitebeard (aka the one we know about, he obviously had many like Luffy) Law, Buggy, Kidd, Shanks
Good Marine Garp Smoker, Coby, Aokiji
Bad Pirate Shiki, maybe another not shown yet Blackbeard, Donflamingo, Kidd, Law
Bad Marine ??? Akainu, maybe Kong
The point is at some point these apex rivals will appear much more clearly as we find out exactly how good or evil they are, and exactly how powerful and important they are and eventually AT THE END OF THE SERIES we will have a very definite answer of ONE PERSON TO FILL EACH OF THESE ROLES. I'm looking for an opinion on WHO and WHY you predict someone to fill the "good" roles.
---------- Post added at 11:28 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:24 AM ----------
Bah it changed the format of my fourth paragraph:
Rival Role Vs Roger Vs Luffy
Good Pirate = Whitebeard = Law, Buggy, Kidd, Shanks
Good Marine = Garp = Smoker, Coby, Aokiji
Bad Pirate = Shiki or other = Blackbeard, Donflamingo, Kidd, Law
Bad Marine = ??? = Akainu, Kong