Lance (Pokémon Red, Blue, Yellow, Green / Gold and Silver)

This will likely upset the Gen I girlies, but the entire premise of Lance as a dragon-type trainer just falls so flat in the original games, and even in Gold and Silver, that the iconic first champion just pales in comparison to even the least remarkable trainers in my ranking. His team is just the same Pokémon three times (two Dragonairs and a fully-evolved Dragonite as his ace) slapped with other Pokémon that are vaguely dragon-like in every way except having the actual typing. (It is important to contextualize that the Dragonite family was the only dragon-type Pokémon in Gen I, so Lance being a dragon freak was just a concept that the roster of available pocket monsters couldn’t actually meet at the time.)

To his credit, Lance’s future appearances have filled out his dragon team with Pokémon like Salamence and Garchomp in HeartGold and SoulSilver’s rematch battle, but ultimately, Lance is proof that a specialist Champion is just setting themselves up with an easily exploitable weakness. Which is a problem that plagues the top dog of a handful of regions. Such as…