Obviously more dialogue than action reliant, so hard to give full judgement without proper subs. Looks pretty impressive however if expectedly slow paced. The battle obviously takes a back seat for a lot of it (like last match most of the intense moments were in the first episode).
I agree that it's a shame that Team Skull were left rather underused this series. They stand out differently from most regional teams, being comical, sympathetic and even having former ties with the protagonists, compared to the generic shadowy sinister villains they reduced most previous teams to in the anime. They seem to make a point that Guzma actually cares about his team, they are after all the true guys that think he is a winner no question.
Golisopod was in flashbacks however, supposed this nulls out the theory that it was the Wimpod Ash saved earlier in the series.
We see Guzma putting things into perspective by himself, Ash doesn't directly give his motivational speech, only indirectly plays into his epiphany with his usual spunk. After seeing Golisopod willing to keep fighting for him, Guzma decides to go out a graceful loser, showing gratitude to his Pokemon, and earning the respect of his peers he ditched. I admit there was some lost potential with interactions between him and Ash, after all Ash has experience with losing the league, he's a guy that's used to taking defeats in stride, making him a blatant counterpart to Guzma whose defeats got the best of him.
After watching today's episode its safe to say guzma has to be the most underused character of entire series. His debut was after episode 100+ and still he has able to leave far more impact than any other character in such short time, he deserved many more episodes, i just hope today's episode is not the last time we saw him, his story is still unfinished with hala, kukui and probably with ash.
There's part of me that hopes the upcoming announcement is a tie in series akin to Chronicles to run alongside SS, since so many characters in SM feel under-utilised despite the potential they had and the series didn't really feel like it was in any rush to develop many of them.