Board Thread:Theories and Speculation/@comment-36649908-20180820043658/@comment-36649908-20180827053115

Thekillman wrote: Pain was completely unknown. Nobody knew who he was or how strong he really was. Obito was arguably the strongest ninja in the world, and completely unknown. Which only proves my point. Even Bee was a relatively unknown ninja despite being hugely powerful. Power and fame are not related. Just ask Hamura.

Pain was known if you asked around, as Jiraya learned about how he beat hanzo. But pain and the akatsuki in genral was a shadowy organizaition (similar to kara) so they were less well known but each member (aside from maybe zetsu) was known as a dangerous ninja. Also it should be noted that Pain's power came from the rinnegan, and that won't happen again as Sasuke's is the only one left in existence for ninja's.

Obito wasn't known because he didn't have any real achievements in combat, as in he never beat any single powerful person. He worked from the shadows controlling the akatsuki to do his work. His power came from the OP abilities of a Mangekyo Sharingan.

Though I would argue the strongest ninja in the world at the time of the start of the series was either Jiryaa or the raikage. Jiraya was stronger than pain, as pain said jirya would have won if he knew about the bodies of pain and fought them all from the start. The raikage could probably have beaten pain. And pain was definitely stronger than Obito.