I'm almost betting they'll find some way out of having a definite on screen defeat. They really seem to be going out of their way to make sure none of the girls take even a token beating this series. Sophocles at least had the odd KO or struggle, he earned one solid victory on screen, I can buy he'll meet his realistic experience point, but you know, overweight boy vs cutesy female, who are they gonna want to cushion the most?
I don't know why it matters.
I mean it might as well be Sophocles, simply because its unlikely the winner is going to make the semi finals (losing in the quarter finals) and I cannot imagine what purpose Mina would serve in the Quarterfinals. It's either going to be Kiawe, Team Rocket, or Gladion.
Mina would work well against Gladion (Fairy vs Dark (Zoroark or Umbreon)
But it could be Sophocles going up against Kiawe or even Team Rocket.
Unless they throw us a loop and make Guzma battle Team Rocket for example.
It's really hard to know what they have planned.
Presumably you'd have Ash, Gladion, Guzma, (Maybe Team Rocket) or even Kiawn in the semi finals but who knows, like I said its hard to know how they want to take this.
The match ups in context with a league, are weird.
Ash's battles are really the only ones that will make sense, everything else feels like a random mess where someone is going to have to obliterate a trainer and not get satisfied, but they decided one of the Team Rocket members is going to make it to the quarter finals, and its hard to know against who.