The mid 2000's are known as the dark age of fighting games, with much of the genre suffering with teething pains due to many of the games still struggling with 3d (The only new sf games were the EX games, which are considered the worst sf games outside of the original). The FGC only started to flourish after sf4's release, though SF was mainly aided with moment 37.
Phil is still full of shit on that topic though. His first time playing sf competitively was at EVO 2005, the year after the adrenaline shot the community needed occurred. Prior to that he played MVC2 and he was a tiny fish in a small pond since he only played on the east coast. He was irrelevant in the community at best and a minor nuisance at worst, nothing would be different if he never existed.