>Are there players out there with sub-Diamond rankings that are
>better than him?

Arturo has been the #1 ranked online player in the world for most of the game's life so far. that said, grinding for points online is much different than being an elite tournament player. a lot of the top players use different characters online, or don't even put much effort into ranking up. Arturo/Sabin is known mostly as a streamer, and hasn't won a major tournament in forever even when he's entered.

Infiltration -- who has won the first and only two premier SFV tournaments so far -- point blank says he doesn't care about his online ranking (although he *is* platinum last time I checked) and he doesn't get better from it. he says he gets good by grinding by himself in training mode.

online rankings also got a bad rap in SFIV because the netcode was a lot worse. there were specific single-frame moves that had drastically different timing online or couldn't even be done. also, there were "cheap" moves that *only* worked online because you couldn't react quickly enough with the built-in lag.

so an "online warrior" is still seen as a guy who can't miss a shot in practice but has never proven it in a playoff game.