Once you are able to start humiliating him hes not much of a rival anymore anyway. No reason a just get rid of him option shouldn't exist.
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I mean fuck, you'r erunning your own logic in circles. If we were to feel empathy for him, why would we want to humiliate him in the first place? Just getting him out of the picture makes much more sense if your plan is to actually want us to feel bad for him, or come at the very least come to the understanding of why he acts like the way he does. It seems like you want to develop the character into a villain who we can sympathize with, but also forcing us down either a friendship path were we share the girl (Fuck off this is awful) or just straight up humiliate him. What about people that understand why the way he is, but also don't want to be friends with him? A more of, just go away dude, you've caused enough harm. A realistic approach. Even with the current dirt we have on him we have ample reasons we could make him disappear, and no I don't mean kill him.
It seems you are just bent on shoving him the players face as much as you can. Antagonist change throughout stories and they don't always have to be people. You don't have to rely on him. There's plenty of other conflicts happening in the story that he could be gone and nothing would be missing for people who don't like him in the first place.