Personally, I feel this whole battling thing was lame ever since I heard about people doing it years ago.
My opinion is expressed from a magic point of view- as in, flourish battles are fine, because that's pretty much the only way to judge who's better.
However, with magic, I believe the battles are just degrading the whole art.
I mean, you're filming yourself doing something with nobody watching, and talking to a camera.
And let's say you do some "street magic battle" or whatever...How do you judge reactions? How can you say someone felt magician X's trick was better than magician Y's? This can only be done if you could realy get into someone's mind, which unfortunately, a camera cannot do.
I have many more reasons why battling is not good, but my mind is blocked right now.