Low tier 2 / high tier 3 is not weak, it is a very respectable tier. I might have said somewhere that it was weak, but what I meant was it is no where near tier 1 from what it has shown IMO. Is there a possibility that it is strong? Absolutely. However, then I can simply claim things like "Paul's Weavile is strong because it was consistently used by Paul". Anyone can think that, but general consensus will usually conclude Paul's Weavile is the weakest link. We can't play the "off-screen" game, because all of us have different interpretations. If we are playing the off-screen game, then this discussion is futile because I specifically claimed this as my opinion, and not as a cold fact. I said this before, but making tiers for Pokemon with one or two short appearances is next to impossible to do, which is why I tend to stay away from it. I know I was the one to light the fire, but wanted to know why people though Metagross was tier 1, and I'm still not convinced. To me, what it has shown does not translate to such a high tier placement. However, like I said, this is heavy on how one interpreted the scene, so I won't go out and classify people who thinks Metagross is tier one as "wrong", but I certainly won't back off from my original view because I'm not convinced. Call me stubborn, call me stupid, call me delusional, but from what I see, we don't know how much Metagross was used against Remo, and I know I can't claim that Metagross was used in only one battle, but that goes both ways. I see the appearance as simply a way to remind the viewers that Alain has a Metagross, and didn't want to show off the rest of this team just yet.
Like you said, it is just one example, and we are right back at the problem of "not enough screentime, too much assumption". Metagross did do solid at the start against Pikachu, but ended up getting exposed in the end. That just shows it does have some versatility and power, but also has some fair share of weaknesses. Of course all Pokemon have weaknesses, but being exposed in the only fight it was shown, I just don't see how it can be tier 1. Small sample size, but that's the breaks you get for Pokemon that does not appear often.
We are really assuming a lot of assumptions here. We only saw one match, and of course it is possible the one match we saw was the match that exposed Metagross, which is why I'm open for different tiers. However, then everyone is making different assumptions, which once again, brings up my issue with making tiers for Pokemon that does not appear often.
Anyways, I guess you and a couple others convinced me it's not tier 3 but rather tier 2, so hats off to that.