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As a design, it's just really unlikable, even when you throw in the "b-but it's nice around children and doesn't attack weak mons!". And under that whole bit, it definitely feels like a Fire/Fighting that they decided to have Dark in the last minute for it to blend with the heel concept.
I've got nothing against tigers or cats (I am a dog person though but pff) and even I used to enjoy wrestling up to a certain age so the concept isn't really new to me either, but compared to other starter(s) who admittedly used the Fighting gimmick a bit too much, in this case, the pokemon IS the concept of heel wrestling a bit too much while not taking full advantage of it at the same time (the concept art has asian mist). While it is a cat/tiger, it simply acts and looks too much like a human wrestler for a lot of people to just accept it as a cat/tiger, which CAN be awkward to have. I mean, you have pokemon like Machoke and Machamp too, but due to its species being far more ambiguous and humanoid, there's not as much of a animal species to base it from and thus, you never connect the thought of Machamp being offensive to a particular species.
tl;dr as a concept, wrestling fits cats/tigers, but in this case, it overlaps the species way too much to consider it a monster based on such
