getting pwned hard

Tried demo, it was all fun button smashing, won all games, easy. Bought the game, had some fun, all wins, finally got to third league, shit got hard af, tried online, first few games were fun, some won, some lost, but after that I realised that I am getting pwned hard either online or vs CPU. I am not doing button smashing anymore, trying to understand grab and counter attacks, but I kinda miss button smashing, because of the unknown. Now I try my best by blocking attacks and doing attacks, but damn, I am still getting pwned hard. Maybe I should give it some time and learn all the pokemons, I only have this game for 3 days lol. I just wanna have fun damn