I personally Think Phil is actually painfully below average with fighting games when all his experience is factored in. He isnt the "worst player ever", and has fundamentals but id hope so after playing them for 20+ years. His reactions and out of the box thinking are horrible though.
Phils one saving grace is he will look up tech that the pros use and use it himself. But he never adapts it fully, for all his complaints of pattern players Phil easily falls into that category.
Like his YouTube career, Phil was too slow to adapt to changes in the FGC. He wanted it to be like the equivalent of his camcorder days on YouTube, where he could point the camera at the TV, record 10 minutes, upload it and make bank without ever doing more work and improving. He went to tournaments and did the same playstyle over and over, and it worked at the time because it was still early, and then he got his big win playing on a busted port where nobody was really competing. But as the FGC grew, so did the skill ceiling, not to mention the number of available opponents. And the games evolved as well.
And we all know how poorly Phil handles change. He's always been years behind the trends with streaming. But adapting to fighting games isn't as easy because it's not just about being behind on the latest trends, Phil also has slowing reflexes and worsening vision to contend with. With some people, you can say they're good at a certain game in a franchise, but with Phil, I think it's even more specific, he's good at a specific game in a franchise, but only in a specific timeframe. If Phil had a console that somehow played US Turbo players from the mid 2000's, he'd be getting 4th place wins left and right.
But nowadays, he just doesn't get it. I think he genuinely believes the excuses he makes, that he's always making the right play and it's just dropped input or lag or whatever other non-skill excuse he makes up. He can't step back and look at where he needs to improve/learn, so he has to rely on fighting people who are still new/learning the game. Thing is, even if he really buckled down and learned the mechanics of the newer games and started actively practicing, I think he could for sure become an above-average player, but I don't know if he could ever get to prominent FGC levels again. There's just too many other skilled players these days and the previously mentioned slower reflexes/poor vision on Phil's side. I also think nowadays, a mark of better players is being able to mix things up and adapt in a way that wasn't necessarily there in the older days, and Phil just struggles with that too much.
