A former marine admiral, Zephyr was a devoted soldier of the marines back in his earlier years. He lived a dangerous, yet fulfilling life as an admiral, balancing his missions with his family life, living with his loving wife and his playful son. All was well for Zephyr until his family was slaughtered by a vengeful pirate. However, contrary to what one might expect, this event only served as extra motivation for Zephyr to serve the marines and hunt down the pirates of the New World. As he would grow older, Zephyr's role in the marines would transition from soldier to trainer, training the next generation of Marines. However, one fateful day, Zephyr's entire division of recruits, say for two people, would be massacred by a Devil Fruit wielding pirate. Zephyr even lost his arm during that event, leading to it being replaced by a mechanical arm made of Kairoseki. Despite his misfortune, Zephyr's devotion to the marines was unwavering, that is until the same pirate who killed his division would be recruited to join the Shichibukai. After finding this out, Zephyr lost faith in the marines and resigned, opting to form his terrorist organization called the Neo-Marines.

FEATS

Throughout the movie of Film Z, Zephyr is portrayed as a physical powerhouse, as can be seen in this section.

To start things off, there is Zephyr's first encounter with the marines. Here he exemplified a respectable amount of strength, swatting away marine soldiers like flies, destroying the ground in the process. He was then able to block and overpower a strike from a Giant before one shotting him with an attack from his mechanical arm. While this feat mat seem disposable compared to what other characters in the One Piece verse are capable of, it should be able to give you a baseline for what Zephyr is capable of.

Later on in the movie, Zephyr is confronted by Kizaru, a marine admiral. This alone should tell you just how powerful Zephyr is considering the fact that an admiral was required to help the marines take down Zephyr. However, let's examine the fight further. So it starts off with Zephyr reacting to and deflecting a light based attack from Kizaru with relative ease. Kizaru then teleports into the air and projects another beam of light of which Zephyr is once again able to deflect. Now for obvious reasons, this put Zephyr's reaction speed in the FTL tier, but this doubles as a durability feat seeing as how his mechanical arm was dense enough to deflect an attack from Kizaru. He even no sold the following explosion.

As the fight progresses, Kizaru engages Zephyr in close quarters combat. The thing that stands out the most here is that Zephyr was able to keep up with Kizaru, who can attack at the speed of light. This puts Zephyr at the speed of light in terms of combat speed. Then, as Kizaru opens the distance between them, Zephyr reacts to another light based attack from Kizaru.

Now, after this fight sequence, Zephyr is pitted against the Monster Trio. He starts the fight off by attacking Luffy, sending him flying through a wooden door, dealing significant damage to him. He then goes onto block a kick from Sanji and a sword slash from Zoro with his mechanical arm before blocking a barrage of strikes from Luffy with his human arm. Zephyr returns the favor with a kick to Luffy's chest that creates a shockwave, staggering him. Following this, Zephyr overpowers a kick from Sanji, backhanding him away with his human arm. Zoro attempts to strike Zephyr, only for his attacks to be blocked by Zephyr's mechanical arm on two separate occasions before overpowering him with a single arm motion. As Luffy prepares to blitz Zephyr, he reacts to it with a punch to the face, staggering him. With a punch, Zephyr was then able to cancel out a slash from Zoro with relative ease. After the rest of the Straw Hats are seen fighting against Zephyr's subordinates, the movie cuts back to Zephyr blocking an attack from Luffy with his mechanical arm and following up with another punch to the face before tanking a slash from Zoro to the chest and blocking another slash with his mechanical arm. Zephyr then goes onto heavily stagger Sanji with a punch from his human arm. The fight ultimately concludes with Zephyr punching Luffy in the face, creating an explosion that sends Zoro and Sanji flying.

Towards the climax of the movie, Luffy gets a rematch with Zephyr. Zephyr starts the fight off high caliber bullets with his mechanical arm. He then blocks an attack from a Gear Second Luffy with his human arm, albeit Armament Haki enhanced, creating a shockwave. Zephyr goes onto overpower Luffy before firing off more bullets from his mechanical arm, aggressively opening the distance between him and Luffy. Finally, Zephyr fires off an energy blast, further opening the distance and creating large explosions.

As the fight continues, Luffy attempts to blitz Zephyr, but it is ultimately blocked by Zephyr's human arm, without it being Armament Haki enhanced. He then goes onto block several attacks from Gear Second Luffy with his human body parts before causing Luffy to retreat. As Luffy charges towards him, Zephyr creates a large explosion that is so potent that, even though Luffy was a good distance away from the explosion, he was still sent out of Gear Second. This doubles as a durability feat because Zephyr was able to no sell the explosion.

The last rematch Luffy would have with Zephyr is a battle of Armament Haki. He was able to cancel out an attack from Luffy with his Armament Haki before heavily staggering him with a punch to the face and to the gut. He then blitzes Luffy, bombarding him with punches. Luffy then retaliates with a punch to the gut before receiving a strike to the gut from Zephyr that sends him reeling. After this, Zephyr clashes with Luffy before tanking another attack from Luffy. There is then a montage of Zephyr and Luffy trading blows, both of them tanking hits to the face. Following this montage, we see just how much damage Zephyr inflicted upon Luffy as fatigue starts to set in for the Straw Hat captain. And while Zephyr is drained, this can be chalkd up to old age, as established towards the end of the clip. Zephyr then starts to blitz Luffy, hitting him with blow after blow before tanking a kick to the face. Luffy charges towards Zephyr only to be met with a punch to the face. Luffy retaliates with a punch to Zephyr's face before receiving several punches to the chest. Now, at this point, both Luffy and Zephyr are nowhere near fighting condition, but as said before and as said in the video, this is because of Zephyr's old age, and yet despite this, Zephyr was practically able to outlast Luffy, which is impressive given Luffy's insane stamina. In fact, he even goes onto fight against an entire army of Marines while severely injured.