The difficulty curve for normal is sadly not very straight.
I started off with blasting through the first league really easy (not very surprising), next league I get raped in every single match. Never really close to winning even. Second time around, every opponent gets raped again.
On to the next league. Get destroyed (actually won ONE fight) and just as before, as soon as the league resets no one can even touch me. It just makes the game tedious because good thing happen to those who just "grind". I'd like to be more rewarded for using my brain somtimes.