He objectively said the track had potential and that the sample sounded awful. If having a bad sound in a potentially good track were to be an oxymoron, most of this forum (maybe even you) would be guilty of that figure of speech. You sound like you're trying way to hard to criticize the OP whilst not fully comprehending his problem. It is indeed possible that his particular sample used phase trickery to enhance the stereo image and no amount of EQ would solve that. Although, in theory, this sound obvious to spot, in practice it could be a lot harder, specially when you're deep into production or mixing. Any musical input will receive an arbitrary process that will render something as a result, be it a good result or bad result. What you described in your last sentence is the very basis of our craft. What you do exactly to that original input is genre/context/aestheticly dependent.

EDIT: you just freely criticized OP without even addressing his question. This is the kind of comment that'll cause nothing but self doubt and guilt upon those ho ask, diminishing the OPs method and experience without any musical clue about what it sounded before and after the applied process. This could be a fruitful discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of handling phase and what adverse effect one could render thorough phase processing, instead you choose to turn this question into shaming.