You haven't gone crazy, in response to your OP -- iirc the character descriptions from 01 specified Onua as the strongest of the Toa Mata. However, Pohatu was also stated to be slow and clumsy without his Kakama, and so sometime after Greg took over the storyline's fine details, he decided to apply that logic to Onua and state that he was significantly weaker without his Pakari. However, we can also reinterpret this as meaning that Onua and Pohatu are strong in different ways. There was a conversation about this in a thread back in October in which several people reconciled these changes to the story by attributing upper-body strength to Onua and lower-body strength to Pohatu.
If I may, below is basically an exact quote of my favored explanation as I described it in that thread:
Pohatu and Onua are the team's heavy hitters, but for different respective reasons. Onua I assumed to be the strongest in terms of dishing out brute force, but I always assumed Pohatu was the strongest in terms of stamina and durability (just take his first appearance in comic #1, for instance -- he appears entirely at ease following Kopaka around while completely out of his own element; he ventured up Mount Ihu in the first place because he was "practicing." Consider that: when the other Toa have to leave their own elements, it's a pretty big deal for them -- think Gali climbing and Lewa swimming in comic #2 -- but when Pohatu leaves his element? Just casually brushing up on his rock-kicking skills).
So they remain the team's heavies because Onua can deal massive amounts of damage without faltering, and Pohatu can take massive amounts of damage without faltering.
Although I suppose the stamina/durability thing could just as easily fall under "Toughness"