The fight was just a backdrop for Todoroki and Yoarashi's relationship and development, anyway. It only existed to serve a higher purpose.
I'm pretty sure you can find a similar explanation for every fights. The conflict could have handled differently or we could have switch back and forth. I don't think it was a coiencidence that a fight with the villain is how the author chose to engage the conflict. He did the same with McBoom and Deku.
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Remember when Bakugou was kidnapped during the Summer Camp arc and people went up in arms about blonde Sasuke and green Naruto, calling out that this series was going to turn into the same shit even though nothing of the sorts has happened yet? Or how Deku inherited the quirk of the OP number one hero, wrecking robots during the entrance exam and completely overshadowing many other applicants? Good times.
Now people are calling six additional quirks Deus Ex Machina and rule-bending even though they still operate within the boundaries that have been set from the early beginning, and how OP Deku was going to be, even though that was apparent from the moment All Might gave him his strand of hair. People complaining about how the author was running out of ideas for his superstrength protagonist, who just learned a new application for mid-/long-range purposes the very last arc he was in. Who already showed us what he's like at 100% 200 chapters in. That this is not his endgame peak performance has been obvious for a while now.
I don't much have called it bullshit just not being a fan of it.
I personally don't like it because I prefer the parallel of a guy with one power contrasting with the guy with all the power. The author can make the struggling interesting but that theme is lost. I'm not complaining over some future development but the current one. I also am not a fan of Deku becoming once again a wild card when he just started getting some control and being a decent student like his peers. Which I think is once again a current development and not a future one since we already saw how he couldn't control the whips and the promise of struggles for the other ones.