Man, oh man. It’s hard to know where to begin.
What they actually said (as in the main thrust of what they said) was that they have shrunk the skill gaps in matches and they want to continue to do so. That was the main point they made.
The other things you are bringing up were small asides. As an aside they said that it can be beneficial to play in matches with players who are more skilled than you. They also said that some players like that.
And, well, to be perfectly honest. Those things are true. They are true from a competitive athletics perspective and they are true from a learning science perspective. In terms of the learning science, it’s called the zone of proximal development. And the thing we always tell our players as coaches is that if you want to improve you should play against players who are better than you.
But none of those very true things takes away from the main point they were making during that bit of the discussion which is that they have and are continuing to shrink the gap between the most and least skilled players in a match, because they do not want that to be a large gap.