When fans talk about Nadal’ AO 22 win there is very little respect because he ‘stole’ it from djokovic and would have virtually no chance to win if Djokovic played.
But Djokovics RG 23 win has no such claims about it. I’ve actually seen some fans even say it Nadal played djokovic would’ve bageled him…
Not that I care about any arguments regarding either case, people differentiate between the two things by saying that “Rafa missed RG 2023 due to injury, he wasn’t denied his chance to play by the government like Novak was”.
Really though it doesn’t matter. Both beat who they were supposed to, and the competition that they faced. It’s also simply a fact that Rafa at his current level hasn’t been a challenge to Novak on hard courts at all in a decade, definitely not at AO, while Novak has still shown the ability to hang with beat Rafa sometimes on Clay and even RG, recently being RG 2021 (although Rafa got hurt during that match and wasn’t the same after).
Strictly speaking, If Novak plays AO 2022 there’s a pretty good chance Rafa doesn’t get through him considering how close Daniil and even Shapo came, while if Rafa plays RG 2023 there’s still a chance Novak beats Rafa. I’d consider Rafa the favourite but there’s a far greater chance Novak can beat Rafa at RG than there’s that Rafa can beat Novak at AO.