OS throw works well on Abel (he is weak to throws in general), and b.throw dash setups are good vs him cos j.hp can cross-up. He has a weird hitbox after some knockdowns. Stuff like f.throw, mp rainbow, electricity whiffs against him but it hits vs the majority of the cast. You have to be careful with electricity pressure against him in general cos it has a tendency to whiff.
MP elec is completely fine against him actually.
He can be mp elec’d from farther than a lot of characters can be hp elec’d
You just have to get used to doing mp elec reliably.
Why the elec MP ? What’s the difference ?
-4 did you say hehehe love it already
-LAU
hp elec doesn’t work well vs. him, but mp does. something about his reel/block animation is weird.
This is some pretty solid advice, I’m an experienced Abel player coming to the Blanka team so I figured I’d lend you guys a hand and tell you my abel tricks against blanka.
First off, be grabby.
Bad Abels are going to have crappy anti-air. Especially to cross-ups, if they don’t know how to use s.hp correctly all your jump-ins are free.
If blanka lightning whiffs against me I walk forward and low short into mp change of direction, 99.9% of the time I will see another electricity about to come out and I get a counter-hit cod which I can combo into fadc c.hp > falling sky or U1.
Ex-upball on wakeup should probably be your only ball in this match other than lp whiffball, any other Blanka balls are like candy to my Abel. (no homo)
My MAIN tool to get in is s.lk. Abel’s far s.lk is +4 on hit and step kick is a 7 frame start-up (aka if that button you’re touching is anything but a 3 frame normal you’re about to get bodied) so watch out for that. The key is to differentiate between step kick and s.lk, whiff punish step kick NOT s.lk. Not sure if you can slide under one or both of these, I would be surprised if you could get under s.lk, but step kick idk.
if you block step kick and he dashes in, neutral jump is probably your safest bet. don’t be too predictable with it though, don’t grab, you’ll probably get TT’d (unless you notice he uses normal grab alot) Backdash is good unless he has an OS where you get hit by ANOTHER step kick (step kick -> dash -> low jab whiff -> step kick) or even worse, U1 so test the backdash waters before you abuse it. If he can’t punish backdash you’re golden. He might do low short as well.
If you knock Abel down, ex-roll/CoD/TT are the reversals he’s most likely to use depending on how the match is going, obviously this gets much easier if he doesn’t have meter. ex-roll is nothing to be scared of, no big deal he just runs away and that’s good for you because being close to abel sucks.
Ex-CoD has one hit of super armor so either use an armor breaker, maybe throw or just neutral jump. Ex TT beats all normals/meaties and loses HARD to throw/neutral jump.
Anyway, my best advice to approaching this match-up is to hit and run. Lame him out, if he gets impatient trying to get in he’s going to do stupid rolls which you can grab or meaty(if they aren’t EX) or jump-ins which you can anti-air clean. Knock him down once, get some good damage off an ambiguous cross-up or something, and then get out.
Other things: His U1 beats ground U2 from like fullscreen. I’ve killed other-wise good blanka players trying to chip me out with this, so idk if that’s common knowledge around here.
Hope this helps, looking forward to upping my game with blanka and probably being on these forums a lot, especially for the first few weeks 
Thanks for you post, really interresting from an Abel player.
Both of these are actually punishable on hit. I never ball against good Abels, and when I do I FADC them.
Blanka’s far st.lp will beat Abel’s st.lk at max distance, but I prefer far st.mk, which usually beats it or trades in Blanka’s advantage. Another option is to backdash into cr.hp which does the most damage and gives you space, but it’s easier for Abel to react to this. The weird thing about Abel’s st.lk is that if you stuff it he actually gains a bit of ground unless your move causes him to go into a reel animation. So each time you stuff it you have to adjust your spacing (depending on which move you use) because if he does it again it’ll beat yours.
Blanka shouldn’t really use U2 for this match, and neither should Abel. Both Abel’s Ultras can punish Blanka balls on block or hit, but Breathless has a greater chance of whiffing if Blanka does a safe ball. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Soulless fail against a blocked Blanka ball.
BTW TAKU SAID ABEL VS BLANKA IS 5-5.
VINDICATION
Hahah.
I still think it’s unfun to play.
Yeah i agree. It for sure can be.
He said something about other match ups ? I heard he said Fei is a 8-2, and after ?
Good stuff, yeah the less balls you use in this match the better (aside from like lp hori whiffs, you can do some good mindgames against Abels who are eager to block a ball to set up U1) and as Abel I ONLY use U2 against gief and sometimes fei long.
Good insight to the pokes though, I’m literally like a day 3-4 blanka so I’m trying to level up quick and one of the things I’m unfamiliar with is his pokes. I have basically been using s.lp/s.mp and sweep / cr.hp (seems to catch a lot of people off guard with how far it reaches) I’ll have to check out far st.mk when I get home!
I forgot to mention in the Abel Match-up: EX-Change of Direction loses to electricity and hurts him BAD and puts him on the ground.
Something that really frustrates me about Abel is his FA. If you try to throw when Abel’s shoulder retreats, Blanka’s throw whiffs and Abel gets a free crumple. So even if you properly read a focus attack and try a hop throw, 9/10 times it will whiff, which is complete BS.
happens to me also! I’m like WTF everytime!
I don’t like hop -> throw vs. focus. Ball if I have charge, jab xx hop if I’m close, but other wise I just try to get positioning. risk:reward isn’t good.
I go for throw vs Abel cos of ambiguous x-ups. Balling is risky if he has charge, but then again I haven’t tested to see if he can punish on hit after a broken Focus Attack.
Yes some characters are this way when you try to hop in on them. Options against this are you can do cs.MK after the hop which beats out armor moves. Another option is to just hop again and go through his FA. Throwing after a naked hop is risky and if people are countering it then you should either stop doing it, only do it in strings, or instead of a throw do something like c.LK xx HP electrics.
Nah I’m talking about when you read a Focus Attack. There are lots of players who walk forward into focus in order to catch random slides. Against most characters the throw will beat it. Against Abel it just fails. Even hop electricity gets beaten.