I disagree heavily.
Joey was being toyed with the entire duel. Describe it as overestimation of Ra or underestimation of Joey (I believe the latter), but Marik made a mistake, and that's the only reason Joey gets credit for that duel. People take his survival of Ra and being "one move away from winning" as justification to claim that he was on par or even better than Marik, but that's faulty due to it being blatant that he was strung along just like Yugi was in his duel later on. Marik himself may not have been an A+ duelist like Yugi or Kaiba without his Egyptian God Card, but he did have more skill than Joey at the time, even without Ra; Ra was just the cherry on top.
Joey's Battle City deck itself wasn't that impressive. It relied on luck far too many times. It was composed of mainly weak monsters (which is why Crush Card didn't hurt it that badly in the filler duel with Kaiba), some booster cards like Graceful Dice, and a few aces (Jinzo namely). Compare his deck to Kaiba's and you'll see just how shitty it is, though it's actually better than Yugi's in some regards.
Anyway, Kaiba would stomp Joey. Kaiba was an A+ duelist regardless of Obelisk or not. His deck had a beatdown/disruption theme and it was very good at it. Crush Card, Virus Cannon, 3x BEWD, Enemy Controller, Soul Exchange, Final Attack Orders, etc. They're all very disruptive to Joey's strategies. And if you give Obelisk to Kaiba, yeah, this is no challenge whatsoever for him – unless you believe Joey could topple a prime Yugi with Slifer in his deck.
The established chain of BC was: Marik >= Yugi >= Kaiba >>> Joey
I'd even say Odion was superior to Joey by a small amount, though that's a much closer duel than this one. Hermos would be Joey's only hope, and it still wouldn't be enough.
