Yes, that may be a (partial) solution. Unfortunately, believing in that solution would require me to put faith in Gree managing a delicate balance between attack and defense stats and having defense buildings stats compatible with stats inflation. Given my past experiences with changes and the tendency of attack growing over defense I am lacking that faith.
On a second thought I am not really convinced your solution would work for the incentive of improving your attack (or to improve your defense by equipment), as any of those stat increase would only give you stronger rivals. IMO pairing by stats does not make sense when you want to have a competition over stats.