>>58367902>the alola league official because its the equivalent of a backyard neighborhood tournament If it's formally part of the Pokemon League then it counts. We see that in characters like Goodshow who oversees all of the leagues. It was Alola's first competition but it was still official.
>when he kept getting filtered out at the top10 in conferences which arent even elite four level seems inconsistent.If you ignore a lot of context, sure. He beat the Battle Frontier who are stated to be above the gym leader level and are put on a similar level to Agatha to my recollection, impressing even Paul who is a veteran trainer like Ash. He was then the only trainer in all of Sinnoh to defeat Tobias' Darkrai and went a step further by defeating his Latios. Which makes Ash the second strongest Non-E4 trainer in all of Sinnoh at the time. Then in XY we see him and Alain were neck and neck and ended in basically a coin flip. With Alain being depicted as defeating Malva, an Elite Four member, in a duel between their aces and being capable of keeping up with Steven.
Ash by the end of XY is pretty clearly meant to be an Elite Four-level trainer. Just as Alain is Elite Four-level. Then Sun and Moon took place with Ash continually training and competing with Tapu Koko, a legendary pokemon, leading up to his final battle against it. And while it's not explicitly stated in the anime, Kukui in the games was said to have participated in the Kanto League and was second only to Lance.
You might think Ash leaping from E4-level to Champion-level is still hard to believe but consider Flint defeating 2-3 of Cynthia's pokemon and she used Garchomp to take him down. Then consider Journeys is over nine months after SM (Burnet gets pregnant and gives birth between the two) and Ash had plenty of time to refine his abilities further.
In short, ignoring Unova, Ash was already nearing E4-level by the BF. Was firmly E4-level by the end of XY and was Champion-level by Journeys.
