Short note to Kabuki:
He probably means Zangief’s a3 ground move, the hopping headbutt. Kara activate with it, and Zangief goes flying across the screen and its grabby time.
For the dummy stuff: P2 dummy C-groove Sagat all way into the right corner, player K-Zangief on the left. Used the C-groove as a distance measure.
In terms of move reach, st. fierce has the most reach, then cr. fierce, then cr. RH. Both fierces actually cover the same amount of distance, but Gief takes a little step forward for the st. fierce. That of course can work for and against you. Note however, cr. fierce can appear to have equal or better reach sometimes, mainly because against crouchers, st. fierce has to hit their head or will whiff, while cr. fierce loves the fact that crouchers get fatter.
For fun training mode stuff.
Zangief’s st. fierce vs Sagat’s st. fierce. When both moves are clearly out of range, and they can only hit each other’s arms, Sagat’s arm will usually hit Gief’s arm clean. The only time it will trade is if Gief’s fierce is already out and hitting, and Sagat’s arm extends into that. Then it trades. Sagat’s fierce is like that, since his arm starts hitting as soon as it extends, Sagat can punch into an already extended fierce and get a trade. On the flip side, Gief’s arm kinda sticks out before it starts hitting, so punching into a fierce gets Gief owned a lot. So pretty much the only way for Gief to win is to hit back a whiffed fierce, or have his move out well in advance and trade. In terms of reach, including the little forward movement that Gief makes doing the fierce, Sagat st. Fierce and Gief st. fierce have mostly the same reach, i.e. if one whiffs, so will the other. There is a very small area, where Gief’s fierce WILL reach, and Sagat’s will not. However, it’s too small to be of any practical use. Note, this does not take into account stuff like Sagat attempting to do a second fierce, and you hit his forward leg with your Gief fierce already out. For those people who want to try for themselves, set the training dummy as Sagat, walk it back into the corner, then record it to do fierce, then stand still. As long as Gief is standing behind the C in C-groove (on the dummy’s bar), the Sagat fierce will whiff.
Fun note about Sagat’s st. Fierce. If Zangief is crouching/crouch blocking, Sagat’s st. fierce loses a little bit of reach. You’ll find there’s at the right range, if you stand/stand block, you’ll get hit by the fierce, but it whiffs on crouching Gief. Could be useful for some whiff punish trick like, crouch, stand up fierce (because at this range, Zangief’s fist can actually reach Sagat’s body).
Gief’s cr. fierce shows similar properties in terms of trading. Gief’s cr. Fierce seems to have less reach than Sagat’s st. Fierce, due to the aforementioned missing step. If Sagat’s st. fierce whiffs, you can’t hit his body with cr. Fierce if he remains standing, unless it’s you’re crouching at the range where Sagat’s st. Fierce just barely whiffs. If he crouches, he’s easy to hit though, see below.
Gief’s cr. Roundhouse has clearly shorter reach than Sagat’s fierce, but has the very nice property that Zangief is low enough that he’ll go right under the fierce. The same applies to cr. MK. So if you and your opponent hit your buttons at the same time, Gief will sneak right under and trip Sagat. Since Sagat’s leg is stepped forward, as long as he pressed fierce, it will not whiff. On the other hand, in a JD situation, if Sagat hits with the tip of his arm, and Zangief JD’s, the cr. RH can whiff because it’s out of range (no knee to hit). Besides that, after retesting in training mode, I recorded a dummy that could not be hit back by cr. RH. I spent at least 10 min trying, and failed to score any connected RH’s. Then within the next 30-40 seconds, I got a couple of cr. MK’s to connect. So this would suggest that Sagat’s st. Fierce is indeed -9, which is why cr. MK can sometimes work with strict timing, but cr. RH never worked. Note, for people who want to test this yourself. Don’t hit fierce, then hold down back immediately for the dummy. For some reason this allows the dummy to get hit. No idea why. Try to time your block like a JD, and you should get the same result I did.
Against Sagat’s cr. fierce, Zangief’s st. fierce is incapable of hitting the extended limb, it goes right over top. So it only connects if Gief’s fist reaches Sagat’s head. However, at that range, Sagat’s cr. HP will hit Zangief’s knee as he steps forward to do the fierce. So, you won’t win if both moves come out at the same time. It can whiff punish, but I’d rather use crouching fierce, see below.
Sagat and Gief cr. Fierces can hit each other’s extended limbs, but again, because of how Sagat extends his limb, he tends to either beat or trade with Gief. However, Sagat seems to get pretty fat when he crouches. You’ll find that Gief’s cr. Fierce actually has quite a bit more range than Gief st. Fierce against crouching Sagat. However, the same applies to Sagat’s crouching fierce, Gief is fat when ducking too. If you’re ducking with Gief, Sagat’s cr. fierce has roughly equivalent range to the st. fierce. It’ll connect if you stand past the C in C-groove. However, if you’re standing with gief, you can go as far as the G, just behind the R. At any rate, Gief’s cr. fierce has a slight edge on Sagat’s cr. fierce. However, you can boost this edge by simply standing at range so Sagat’s cr. Fierce whiffs, then you do your own cr. Fierce. Fun stuff.
As for cr. RH, if you could sweep him, he can hit you with cr. Fierce. Equal range, his move is slightly faster, but you get a knockdown. You don’t get a range bonus on cr. RH like you do for cr. HP sadly, so yeah.
