I will bring in the anime and game canon into this to give my reasoning for the suggestion. In Pokemon Origins, when Red faces off against Brock, Brock asks Red how many gym badges he has. When Red replies with none, Brock says he will battle with, "These Two", being Geodude and Onyx. It shows he has more mons to use. With that and Scarlet/Violet allowing the challenges to be in any order. Why not allow challengers to take on any gym with curated teams for each level cap, alternatively, have gyms have teams specific for each amount of badges the challengers currently have. There is the issue of the first gyms having comp illegal mons(TTar and Noivern) which while having illegal mons is all fine and well and I know some do not have a problem with it and the gyms should be challenging for the challengers themselves, there is an issue of psuedo legendaries being faced off against. A very large portion of the challengers are kids and the events happen well past their screen time or even bed times for some so they are unable to gain access for a chance for the prizes, in addition, newer players not having access to an elytra and not having a good knowledge of the spawn map makes them significantly disadvantaged in comparison to the long standing players(a good chunk who participate are gym leaders). Alongside the above thoughts, maybe making the leader's teams accessible to be viewed on the website would assist in allowing the challengers to properly prepare for the road ahead and curate a team specifically to be able to train alongside those mons they are going to take on the gyms with.

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