>>54020733They wanted so badly to get the Unova roster over that almost every mon with the same gimmick as the Golden Age Pokemon had straight up better everything. It was completely intentional.
As someone who has played Machamp in older gens, I can tell you what its problems are:
It's slow and has no independant means of raising its speed.
Its special stat is unusable.
It isn't bulky enough.
It doesn't have a recovery (not even Drain Punch kwab).
Its 100 BP moves aren't enough, not even with their particular secondary effects (Heracross gets a 120 BP move as its signature, and that made all the difference).
It has no utility moves and can't do anything but boost and attack.
Payback was great, Knock Off was huge for it.
Flame Orb and No Guard and Stone Edge was huge.
Bullet Punch was okay for it.
Steadfast was worthless; even if it wasn't so situational, 1.5x is not enough for it.
Conkeldurr is better because it's min-max'd on its bulk and attack, and has Mach Punch.
Machamp is too slow and too weak to be a hyper offensive mon, too frail with no recovery to be a viable (in high tiers) bulky offense mon, too limited to be a utility mon or stallmon. If you fixed any of those flaws it'd be OU easy in any generation from Gen II onward.
In the context of Smogon's Gen 9 OU, it really actually would need all three additions to be viable---that's how competitive the field is. It needs to be faster, it needs to be bulkier, and it needs to provide more utility than it currently can. If it retains Knock Off, that's no longer enough in itself all else being ameliorated. It would need to be something devastating like Salt Cure or Octolock.
Its Hidden Ability should have been Skill Link for Arm Thrust considering its limbs.
