This. Read through the first 30 years of Spider-Man and two things become apparent. One, Classic Kingpin was a beast and a half. Two, nobody tags Spider-Man as often as Ock. Like, speedsters have worse track records against him.
Ock usually loses, but his reactions with the tentacles must be off the charts to consistently grab/whack/hit Spidey. A lot of Spidey's villains started to become jokes later on as he progressed (he doesn't have a legit loss to Green Goblin in decades, for example). Ock was one of the few that fared well as time passed.