After watching some battles, Michael was actually a little bit disappointed in his competition.
He fought against the Kitsun Lord and Haro Ki's subordinates for several days and spent weeks in the Origin Expanse to increase his strength rapidly so he had expected some worthy opponents here as well. Sadly, the combat prowess of the other participants of the Battle Exchange didn't increase by much. If anything, Michael felt that some of the Token Holders were a lot weaker than before.
But was that really the case, or did his strength increase to a higher extent than he predicted? Or maybe Michael was just better at pointing out the other participants' weaknesses after everything that happened in the last few weeks.