Given Grapploct's presumed battling style, I can't wait to see it battling. I'm still unsure if Ash will get focus here with his fighting types.
Considering they're being consistent with the names, I have no idea why you'd assume they're supposed to be the same character.
In fairness to the argument. Sometimes things do get overlooked by game localization or even actual people working on the games and even the anime.
For example:
1. The English Localization didn't name Janine properly and for FRLG her name was Charine because the localization team didn't pick up on Koga's daughter being Janine.
2. Sometimes the original Japanese gets it wrong and the dub actually fixes it. Such as Sawyer's Slurpuff using Electro Ball, a mistake that the dub picked up on (I think) and decided to rename it Energy Ball a move Slurpuff actually can learn. Not sure how Energy Ball got confused with Electro Ball in the Japanese, I would assume the wrong attack was listed.
3. Sometimes the dub misses out an obvious reference to the game's counterpart. Like if a Super Potion was in the Japanese originally, it'll it end up being Magic Potion in the dub because they missed it.
Now I will agree it is unlike the Japanese writers to forgo continuity per se, in context to specific characters. But it wouldn't surprise me AT THE VERY LEAST they created 10 different adapatations for a single character, not realizing this character is the exact specific character in the games, because of generic designs, random name of character, or even in some cases no name at all (like most NPC in 1st generation).
So let's say a character exists in the game referred to as "Blackbelt Justin" he's a relatively important character in Kanto, and this character shows up minorly in Hoenn and Unova, same exact name and relative same character design (or whatever the blackbelt looks like in those games).
The anime could create Three different characters with different names referencing this ONE character because some person was like "Oh yeah there's this Blackbelt that had a unique dialogue of sorts in this game, let me create this character in an episode, forget what the actual character is, or misremembers (doesn't like the name, or wants a different name), and that's how you end up with Blackbelt Charlie which is based off of Blackbelt Justin (for this example).
I can easily imagine that being the case here with everything regarding the Dojo Master of Saffron who has shown up in other games, that the character got multiple adaptations within the anime, due to overlooking past examples, or careful thought.
That being said I absolutely agree with you on the "same character" they may be inspired by the same game character (if that's the case) but I doubt they're the same anime adaptation of said character.