Our tier list is the way other tier lists should be. It reflects what characters are actually played. As said by myself and adumbrodeus - it weighs the matchups.
Well, not even the characters that are actually played, the characters that are naturally played, aka, the characters with better match-ups get played more because they're better characters.
If we create a tier list based purely on match-ups, and then weigh the match-ups based on relative position on the tier list, if you repeat until you get the equilibrium point, you should basically get this tierlist.
Or... you just argue based on the fact that x,y,z characters are important and x,y,z characters are irrelevant.
The distinction should be defined then. He could have said "technically, due to sheik's better matchups, sheik > fox." He didn't. How was I to know he didn't "technically" mean something else. I don't know how educated of a smasher he is or where he is coming from.
I agree with the rest of your post though obviously.
Well, that's what the term "technically" is for, and he did say that it wasn't the case because tournament results are factored in so heavily.