Idk, I used to really believe in this until today. I just played against this one Gief in Endless, and he beat me 20 games out of 30. Idk what it is, but he’s definitely the more patient and skilled player. Does T.Hawk really and genuinely have the advantage against Zangief? It seems to me like he has the better normals, more reliable Specials/Supers/Ultras, etc. Idk, lol, can anyone please enlighten me (Without trolling :))?
YES
T…Hawk
OWNS
GEIF
SO
GOT
DANG
HARD
Can you be more specific as to what I should do? What normals I should use? How to pressure him? What to look for? And why does T.Hawk have the advantage over him?
do a lot of far standing hk, it kills gief.
just watch out for his jump in hp at the right range, cause it owns hawks fs hk.
when you jump in do a late condor dive. most gief like to lariat.
or try do a cross up condor dive, it will eat gief.
at mid range, use a lot of st mp and cr mk.
the rest is spd each other 
the match up was like 7-3 in hawks favor, now after buffing gief it’s more like 6-4.
really need to watch out for is lp spd and the damage of hp spd.
hope this helps
I like st.fierce and st.rh in this match. If you think that they are going to do an s.mp at mid range throw out a s.fierce. It comes out really fast and beats the s.mp. Watch your usage of s.rh because j.hp beats it free. I usually like doing one or two s.rh and then doing some s.lk and s.lp to see what the Gief player does and then you can just react accordingly.
Hawk can turtle Gief like a Muthafucker and Giefs only response is to turtle back. Alot of nj NOT SURE WHICH BUTTON really keeps his approach at bay. You can’t just recklessly throw out s. hk’s because he can whiff punish on reaction with s.mp. Also, you might get jumped on. Also believe it or not he has a tough time with Hawk’s “vortex” on unteched KD’s. EX condor is now safe from EX GH retaliation. On the topic of EXGH w/ no KD, you actually can u1 him if he goes for spd. Provided your in range since it can hit from pretty far out with a lp/lk OS.
Never ever thought is was 7-3 tho.That a bit retarded to say. Its 6-4 Hawk. Just not that many “good Giefs” out there so when you do play one its like “Whoa!”
Thanks for the advice guys, I really appreciate it. Now I’m really starting to see that it is in Hawk’s favor. I think 7-3 in Hawk’s favor is alittle excessive, more like 6-4.
It’s just bad- We anylzed this matchup so much… Its in the old matchup thread if anything. Its not easy for geif. If Geif gets in just dont freak out. His OKI is bad now.
Okay then. Thanks.
Keep in mind just because on paper Thawk has the advantage doesnt mean that you will beat every Zangief out there. Every match comes down to reading your opponent, reacting appropriately, and minimizing your own mistakes. Its possible that the Zangief player just knows all the frame data and has alot of experience vs Hawk. Dont get discouraged, I like to go to the forums for characters I have a problem with and read their matchup thread to see how they perceive the match. Try it out, its helpful.
I played Joe_Lewis the other day with my Gief. He won both rounds using ONLY the 3K button. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what he did, I haven’t watched the replay to confirm it. But I remember thinking even during the match, “Holy shit, this guy’s just using 3K! I suck ass.” I’ve beaten Giefs pretty badly before with my Hawk, and I’ve always felt Hawk had the advantage. But this was the first time I’ve actually been on the other side and fought a good Hawk with my Gief. So my lack of matchup knowledge also contributed to my ass-whoopin. It was so bad, that during the second round I practically gave up.
So, with that in mind, I like to think that the Hawk/Gief matchup is a 9-1 matchup. Of course it’s not REALLY that bad, but it’s definitely an uphill battle for Gief if the Hawk actually know the matchup.
And Joe_Lewis…I hate you. Did you REALLY have to one button me?! OMG, if I can get over the embarrassment, I may even post the video in this thread.
Edit: Just in case anyone takes this too seriously. I don’t really Joe, that was a joke. I even purposely fought him to see how badly his Hawk would thrash me.
lol, this match is really easy for hawk, his pokes are much better, st roundhouse, st fierce and strong shutdown eveything zangief can do, condor dive beats everything air to air, neutral jump fierce is good too, if he jumps on you use cr fierce for trade, dont jump if he have the siberian blizzard, although ranging slash beat this too. if you are in trouble on the knockdown reversal th EX to get out… theres not much things zang can do on this matchs aside mindgames or random green hands
YEAH! Me and some of my friends were playing were making bets as to how many games we could win with one button. I remember that match because they were giving me crap because we had to pick the button before we picked our character and I chose roundhouse because there was a T.Hawk chasing me in ranked match and I remember saying “Watch its prob the same guy and hes going to play T.Hawk and get exposed again”. Then we saw geif and we all started dieing of laughter. Dolla bets with buttons are fun… Hawk-Geif is rough if you don’t know what you are doing.
Yes, most of the time T Hawk have the upper hand. I own some of them, but them they go back to basics. The DP are unfair in a grappler. But well… I just Ultra II them out of the air. There are good T Hawks but most of them are average (nothing to do witht the BP / PP ) I play online using Giefzan as my main. FInd me in GFWL (PC).