Yep, we've seen that better reaction times, among other things, are having a larger impact. Most of the top players, even in games with lots of legacy systems, are young people.
Bragging about being a rank that didn't exist in the older games doesn't mean anything. It just means all the potential Legends were brawling in Master rank until now.
Yeah, it's somewhat contradictory to what they established at the beginning that he didn't focus on going pro. If he's good enough to hit legend rank in his free time, he's good enough to use PTO to enter a Capcom Cup regional qualifier.