I agree. I'd rather see the fights mixed up, new opponents, instead of cliched rematches. (Sakura vs. Kabuto instead of vs. Chiyo) But I could see it playing out either way, so I won't get my hopes up.
The chuninn match and the rescue Sasuke arcs were set up in that same fashion. Minors characters fighting building to bigger battles. I wasn't reading the manga then. Does anyone remember how long those took to play out?
Also, were those new countries named on the map? Hot Springs? Rock? I've been looking at the geography lately for my little fanfic, and I don't remember those being officially named in the manga. (Anime doesn't count!) Nobody else may care about this but me, tho.
The thing is that the chunin exams had a rather interesting written test, plus a survivor-type thing in a forest, THEN the fighting. However, it was tournament style, with one battle over before we could even see it, and there was a month-break for Naruto to learn new jutsus. Then we had the first few rounds of the finals. Which was followed by a brief terrorist attack (wouldn't call it a war exactly, unless it could be compared to Israel's 6 day war). Plus, the arc gave us significant story and character development, both during and in later arcs. While it did take quite a few volumes, at least the setting moved and the main characters were not completely forgotten.
The Sasuke retreival arc was fairly brief in my opinion. There were only five opponents, all of which were dealt with in a reasonable amount of time. Plus, we got to see new abilities vs ones we've seen but fleshed out. That might be a possibility for this one, but I'd imagine with the exception of maybe Nagato, those that are now undead have already pulled out all their cards. Back to Sasuke retrieval, when new characters were added to the fight, they were either dealt with quickly, or finished the fights quickly. Plus, it still didn't forget who the main characters were, not to mention had character development and important plot points. This one only lasted maybe 3 volumes; and in the anime it actually moved things along quicker. None of them were a year+ of non-stop fighting.
I'm fairly hopeful though that Kishimoto won't drag this out in a 1vs1 sense; unlike Kubo, who tried too hard to give each and every character a chance to shine to the point where I didn't care, Kishimoto actually focuses on those relevant in the arc, and should he choose a minor character to fight it's not without reason. Especially since Kishimoto has been placing emphasis on Teamwork again, which I don't think we've seen in Part two since its first arc.
Yeah, I also think the geography in the context of what Kishimoto established before hand looks a bit off. Oh well.