ShanksLeRouxe

Let’s be real here, there’s no reason for Mihawk to be stronger than Shanks.

- Shanks has a superior portrayal with him being a Yonko and Mihawk being WSS. Yonko was portrayed as the 4 strongest pirates. Mihawk is a pirate, so that automatically puts Shanks above him

- Mihawk fought Shanks when he wasn’t even a Yonko yet. Who knows how strong Shanks was at the time? He probably wasn’t even near Yonko Lvl. So there’s no reason to assume Mihawk is on Shanks Lvl now

- Mihawk got stalemated by Vista, a YC3. And begged Vista to postpone the fight. Yonko was shown to effortlessly trash YC Lvl characters. Like when Kaido first fought Luffy, and when Big Mom fought Queen.

- Shanks clashed equally with Whitebeard. And made Kaido run away back to Wano when he tried to go to Marineford. Mihawk has no such feats

- Mihawk dipped the moment he saw Shanks at Marineford. The dude was out of there. Not saying Mihawk was scared but that shows something.

- Lastly, Mihawk cannot even fend off a Navy admiral, but Shanks can beat the Navy.

Based on the fact that Oda has carefully chosen his words and decided to say that Mihawk only surpasses Shanks at swordplay, it is implied that Shanks is, overall, the stronger fighter. If Shanks and Mihawk were to engage in a duel of pure swordplay, it would be clear for one to see that Mihawk would stand at the top.

So overall Shanks is above Mihawk.