Sorry, but that is not correct, nor even close. As I have stated here on a number of other threads I am actually a wood technologist and patented a wood drying process (1979) still used on the West coast.
To start, water is colorless and when soaked into wood you will not see it until the fiber saturation point is reached (at about 25%). A far better test is weighing the wood before and after. Significant water is absorbed even in outstanding boat woods like white oak. Red oak is a horrible boat wood and it will play sponge in water...
White oak has far more "stuff" in the pores which slows water absorption (and especially release when drying). Build a boat of red oak and it would never tighten up and seal off. You can blow smoke through a slice of red oak easily... Even if it is a couple inches long. So wood variety makes a huge difference is water absorption and adsorption (what water does after the fiber saturation point is reached). The shape and size of the pieces makes a huge difference, especially in tighter grain species, also. Something like green cottonwood will have a water content of up to 200%. (in standard usage water content of wood is a function of the dry weight of the wood, so a 1# piece of dry cottonwood weighed 3# when green)
As to burning more slowly... the contact points between the fire and the soaked wood will dry first and start smoking... and it happens quite fast; by no means does the entire piece have to dry out before smoke happens. With a properly dampered fire box the wood will then continue to smoke from the dry points and as the drying advances through the wood it will continue to smoke. Simple physics are very hard to ignore... The cooling done by the evaporating water keeps the fire lower than it would be with dry wood... and it slows the burning of the wood which would add significantly to the total heat put out by the fire. Again, simple physics show it cannot be another way.
That is not to say you have to soak your wood to make your smoker perform at its best, there are simple too many different ways of getting to the same end. But if you are smoking fish soaking your wood will almost always be a huge advantage.