The manga says no. He knows a wide variety of techniques he couldn't possibly know just by existing, he can fight evenly with Goku hand to hand when they have close power levels, he is stated to be a skilled air combatant by Goku, and he references having fought his father before (the fact that he clearly respects his father and is on good terms with him makes me doubt the context was something other than training).This means there's not as much tension in the story if it's Goku vs Cell instead of Goku vs Freeza. Meanwhile, Freeza achieved a Battle Power of 120,000,000 simply by existing.
I would as well. Imperfect Cell is ten times cooler than Freeza and Perfect Cell, while just as lame as Freeza, at least makes more sense for the story. He's SS2-tier to begin with and has enormous potential, so there's nothing saying he couldn't get to Vegetto+ tier just by training (I'd still find it BS, though). Plus, unlike Freeza, he can actually produce henchmen powerful enough to make the post-Buu supporting cast work up a sweat.Not gonna lie, I would love for Cell to come back instead of Freeza.
Speaking of which, it's "nice" to see that they've all but outright said that Ultimate Gohan isn't a thing anymore. Heck, SS2 Gohan might not even be a thing. Honestly, if they were going to treat him like this in all of the post-Buu material, Toriyama should have just said "oh yeah, he lost the power-up like a year after the Buu arc and never thought to get it back, making Goku and Vegeta the strongest non-fusions" (SS3 Gotenks and Mr. Buu are fusions).
