This is my opinion about the Rizzo argument going on lately and I feel like it needs to be addressed.
"If you give him an Inch he'll take a mile." was a direct quote given by the announcer during the 2014 Pokemon VGC National Championship and it covers this situation quite well.
Now, if you're not familliar with this situation, Ray Rizzo was competing in the pokemon VGC Nationals which is in a doubles format and is largely one of the most popular formats available. If the player has any hacked pokemon that were not obtained by in game play or were involved in any sort of tampering even if it wasn't their fault or if there were no buffs or advantages they are to be disqualified from the championship. It has been a solid rule that has been argued for decades.
I think that even though Rizzo "didn't breed the Agislash" if they let him go without punishment or at least no backlash it will make hacked pokemon even more accepted worldwide and that isn't right. Below I explain why I believe the pokemon was hacked and shouldn't have been allowed to pass and why maybe tinkering was involved in not just the Agislash as well.
His game stats were worrying. If he does train up all of his pokemon and ev train them all then why has he only evolved 8 pokemon out of 152 pokemon caught? He also clearly hasn't done any breeding himself because his egg hatching is at 0. If you're using pokemon given to you by your friends in a world championship you have to trust them to breed you that perfect pokemon, and the fact that Rizzo or his friend clearly didn't recognize that the Agislash had a dream ball seems a bit unrealistic, especially on his friend's side who does all of the breeding and catching for Rizzo. (That also rubs me the wrong way but that isn't the point of this argument quite yet. I think that you should personally breed the pokemon that you use in competitive play because it's unknown as to what pokemon are hacked or not. It takes time, sure, but if it's for a regional, national, or world championship then the time is worth it to know that nothing is being tampered with).
This is where he's caught. If he does ev train all of his pokemon, then why does he only have 8 evolutions? Sure, half of his team is non-evolution pokemon like Mawile, but Agislash, Politoad, Hydragon, and Ludicolo are all 3 evolution pokemon. But it doesn't seem to make sense that he would only evolve 4 pokemon for his team and no other pokemon otherwise throughout the whole game. It's a bit fishy, especially considering how he did go through the game, and to even trade pokemon you have to defeat the first gym which usually, at least one pokemon evolves. Also to note, VGC is a doubles format. Going through the game with a doubles team isn't always easy especially considering how competitive pokemon are meant for messing with human minds rather then the AI, and I haven't even mentioned HMs yet.
It is possible that he is being completely honest and isn't cheating but I can't help but raise an eyebrow.
As for people saying that the ball gave the Agislash no buffs in the battle and it should be accepted is like telling a little kid that stole a 5 cent candy that it was okay because it was only 5 cents and it isn't a big deal. But then it gives the mentality to the kid and the other kids around him that if he got away with it then they can too and before you know it there's no candy left for the people who are willing to pay for it. Not to mention some of these kids will start going for the 10 cent candy and soon whole chocolate bars. The kids who worked hard for that money to buy candy and chocolate bars start to wonder what the point was for their hard work while everyone else is getting candy for free and with less time involved. Some keep working hard, others start stealing, and some stop completely. Until some kid gets punished for stealing, nobody will stop and the amount of thefts will just keep growing because they think it's alright.
This is my mentality as I believe I have stated before along with my argument that hacked pokemon are breaking the game.
And especially on an Agislash which I have a good 20-25 3-5 ivs with no guard sitting in my box collecting dust from wonder trade alone. A few might be hacked themselves and I have no intentions of using them unless if I can tell that they are 100% legit, and even so breeding one myself from scratch is simple enough if i ever were to use one. If you want to battle with pokemon that you don't have or don't want to put the time and effort into breeding and training them there's pokemon showdown and many other battle simulators out there.
Rizzo also apparently "doesn't play the games" and gets his friends to breed him his pokemon as I have stated earlier. I believe he battles over pokemon showdown, or these battle simulators which only leads me to have more suspicion. A person who plays the games fully and eagerly love the game for what it is and will be less likely to cheat to get their team while Rizzo seems to have adapted the play to win ideal despite what he says in interviews. It is possible to enjoy the battling aspects of the game and not the tedious breeding and ev training involved but considering how Rizzo has stated that he isn't interested in breeding the pokemon for himself gives me the suspicion that he's more likely to hack his pokemon. On pokemon showdown you don't have to do the tedious breeding or breeding pokemon from past generations in order to get certain moves to breed with such pokemon which can be extremely time consuming. You can just be a first time user and have the best team straight away if you know what you're doing which is great in the way that you can test out your team before putting in all of the effort to make it in the game. But a lot of people skip the last step and simply cheat the pokemon in instead.
All in all, I'm suspicious, and I can barely even consider myself a competitive battler. I haven't even seen or heard of Rizzo before hearing about this either so this is just the perspective of someone who doesn't have any attachments to him prior and is simply a fan of the game itself. I could even be completely wrong, but from this point there's almost no way of telling what actually went wrong here and what the situation actually is unless if we could read minds. Maybe one day the truth will come out but till then Rizzo's justification seems to be a bit flawed.
