Totally – he's fighting the rock/earth type gym leader with electric pokemon.

Discalamer: Nerd alert below
For the record there is no point in modern warfare to "not fire until you see the whites of there eyes". It was first said in 1775 by general pitcairn during the battle of bunker hill. the reason was simple…..guns back then sucked ass. A common saying was they were so inaccurate, you could shoot forward and hit the guy behind you. So naturally he wanted the brits to get in close so they could be more accurate. But ever since the invention of guns that can shoot more than 5 feet, it became obsolete

tl;dr
movies are stupid when they say "dont fire until you see the whites of there eyes"