It’s been a long time since I’ve done video commentary, but it’s also been a long time since I saw vids of a really good Gief player doing something interesting enough that I wanted to commentate on it. Recently Itabashi Zangief, probably still the best Gief player in the world, went to a tournament in Singapore where he played against some good players. Dude above me posted part of it, but he also played Laugh @Ryu (who got 5th at Cal Regionals here in SoCal back in January) and Pei Hoon @Sagat. I’ll start on these v. Poongko vids, fast forwarding to the third set where both players have felt the other out a bit already.
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0:10: So this match starts up real fast. Itabashi does this focus through the fireball thing. What hewants to happen is for his focus attack to go through the fireball and hit Ryu, and that can work, but it doesn’t here because Poongko is just a bit too far away. For this to work Itabashi has to let go of the focus button (so that the actual hitting part comes out) and then if he hits Poongko, either dash toward if it crumples or dash back to safety if it doesn’t. The downside of having to let go is that if the focus doesn’t hit Ryu at all, Itabashi is just sorta walking through the air waiting to get hit (since once you’ve let go of the focus, you can only dash back/toward if it touches the opponent). Obviously here Itabashi whiffs it and Poongko punishes him.
0:13: But not with a very smart punish. This hurricane kick leaves him right next to Itabashi, and while this suplex here isn’t that safe, Itabashi correctly predicts that Poongko won’t jump back or have a meaty out and gets his throw.
0:51: Alright, so here’s that focus through the fireball thing when it works. As you can see, Itabashi started a little closer to Poongko than he did at 0:09.
0:53: I don’t know why Poongko does a dragon punch right after this, but my guess is that he expected Itabashi to dash toward after the focus, which totally would have worked because Gief has only 15 frames of hitstun on his focus to cover his huge 26 frame forward dash (in other words, Poongko would have had 11 frames to do whatever he wanted if Itabashi had dashed in). Anyway, Itabashi dashed back and punishes the dp with spd for the win.
1:14: The start to this round is more of the footsie battle that I think this matchup is mostly about, but I just wanted to highlight this particular thing for a sec because you can see something really important in it. Itabashi whiffs a short and then immediately after does ex green hand. Why? He’s buffering his far standing short into ex hand, which means that every time he does a standing short (or any short or jab) he’s also doing an ex hand motion immediately after it. This way, if the short hits it immediately cancels into ex hand for a knock down combo and if the short doesn’t hit, nothing happens. This obviously makes Zangief’s footsie game much more dangerous than if he was just doing standing shorts. The problem is that sometimes you can mess up the timing and get a full ex hand after instead of just the buffer, which is what happens here. At least, I think this is what’s happening (because it also happens to me). What could also be happening is Itabashi saw Poongko whiff Ryu’s sweep, which takes half a day to recover and is free ex hand bait. Either way, good things to know.
1:21: So here’s something about footsies that some people might not know. After Itabashi jumps here, he holds back while standing, not while crouching. The reason is that when you crouch, your character’s hitbox also gets a little wider by the floor than when you stand. If Itabashi had crouch blocked here, Poongko’s low forward would have touched him and Poongko might have buffered into fireball. Itabashi is 100% sure that he’s outside of Ryu’s crouching medium kick range, so he just holds back because he knows he can’t be touched this way. Itabashi doesn’t really capitalize, but if he’d stuck out standing/crouching short buffered into ex hand after Poongko’s low forward here, he would have caught Ryu’s foot and taken off almost 20% of Ryu’s life with a knockdown ex hand combo. Knowing exact ranges of moves and being able to stand without worry when you know you’re at a safe range is really important in footsies, because it gives you more opportunities to punish out-of-range whiffed moves than if you crouch blocked and let some moves touch you that would have otherwise whiffed.
1:29: This whiffed focus was Itabashi betting on Poongko doing a fireball. Not that great a bet imo.
1:35: Watch Itabashi walk up while spazzing crouch here. Why does he do that? He’s buffering in the ex hand motion, and I guarantee he’s got his hands hanging over the pp buttons just in case he sees Poongko throw a fireball. Reacting to fireballs with instant ex hand is pretty important in footsies against Ryu.
1:49: Once you back Ryu up to something like half a screen from the corner, heads up, because he’s gonna start thinking about doing jump toward instant hurricane kick to fly way over and behind you, which gets him out of the corner, sets up nice spacing for him, and is usually safe unless predicted. Well, Itabashi predicts it here. Once you hit someone with this neutral jump up+fierce headbutt, it usually only takes one more combo to stun them, which results in mind games you can really use to your advantage.
1:53: This jump back was a messed up walk-up spd, I guarantee it. Poongko had just whiffed a crouching forward and had a split second of vulnerability, although I’m not sure this spd would have worked anyway since it kind of looks like maybe Poongko was dashing back by the time Itabashi starts jumping. But in any case, walking up after a whiffed normal and doing standing spd is a great option in footsies.
1:56: More focus-through fishing, although wisely this time he holds the button to verify whether a fireball is coming, sees that none is, and cancels the focus with a backdash instead of letting go.
2:01: Hate that stupid jump hurricane kick, it’s so good. Look at how well it resets the situation.
2:50: Crouching short buffered into ex hand works here, sick. By the way I really wish Itabashi would quit jumping so much.
2:52: So here’s a nice little tip. Post crossup, Itabashi does crouching shorts instead of crouching jabs, for a couple reasons. The first is that people often try to jump away from Gief’s up-close pressure when they predict he’s going for a command grab. What happens when an opponent presses up on the stick while in Gief’s crouching short pressure? He stands up, and once he’s standing up he can’t block low attacks like Gief’s crouching short, so the crouching short hits him. The other reason is that characters like Ryu who have dragon punch motion reversals can’t both crouch block and input the dragon punch motion at the same time, just because one requires down-back and the other requires down-toward. If Poongko is inputting down-toward when Itabashi touches him with low short, Poongko gets hit. The weird thing about crouching short is that it’s actually not a safe block string (ie doing crouching shorts repeatedly doesn’t put the opponent in constant blockstun), meaning the opponent can actually escape with a well timed reversal. But if you use crouching jabs, which do make a safe block string, your opponent can stand up into them if he’s trying to hold up and be safe because they don’t hit low. Luckily it’s pretty hard to do a properly timed reversal in between crouching shorts because you’d have to do the entire dragon punch motion while in blockstun from a crouching short, which is pretty fast.
2:57: I don’t want to go back through all these videos, but if you’ve watched them, you’ve seen that Itabashi usually goes for the down+short knees crossup instead of the fierce splash crossup. The knees beat or whiff through Ryu’s dragon punches, but they don’t offer the same kind of post-crossup options because they just don’t do enough blockstun for Gief to hit Ryu with them in the hand, land, and start a crouching jab/short before Ryu recovers and can dragon punch etc. By contrast, fierce splash gives you all day to do a crouching normal even after getting blocked at the opponent’s head, but unfortunately it makes Gief’s body so wide that he can get hit by things he beats or whiffs through with the tiny hittable hitbox of the knees. Usually you want knees because it’s safe, but sometimes you want fierce splash because of its extra options. Itabashi has gone splash a couple times so far this game. If Ryu thinks Gief is going knees, there’s no point in doing a dp to try to beat the air attack (he can just wait until Gief lands for that), but if he thinks Gief is going splash, Ryu can dp and trade, just like this. Itabashi goes splash, Poongko goes dp, and the result is that Itabashi loses both his lifebar and positional advantages because of a trade dp into ultra juggle.
3:18: Looks like Itabashi predicted jump hurricane but didn’t get his headbutt out in time, resulting in a weird situation where he and Poongko land at about the same time. If Itabashi had woken up with lariat here, he could have knocked Poongko’s jump down, but, well, wakeup lariat is pretty retarded. I would have just sat there too.
3:31: This is a short buffered ex hand gone weird. The short is blocked, triggering the ex hand, but Poongko stops blocking and gets hit by the hand, but Itabashi thought the hand would get blocked because he saw the short get blocked and couldn’t react to the hand hitting in time, so he fadcs back, losing the advantage from the hand and leaving him with no bars of meter. You don’t want to have no bars against Ryu; ex hand is the best thing you have to dissuade Ryu from doing fireballs in footsies, especially when you’re low on life like Itabashi is and can’t afford to many focus-throughs.
3:35: Daaang, see? If he’d had meter here, this short buffered hand would have been the end of the match. Make sure you’re buffering the hand with jab+strong just in case something like this happens; strongs don’t usually combo and fierces never do, and only jabs recover in time to have any chance at blocking something like Ryu’s 3 frame super.
3:40: Why does Itabashi put a standing strong into this fireball, you say? This is another footsie trick, and Itabashi’s been doing it the whole game (although it hasn’t paid off too much). Basically, Ryu’s hitbox extends out when he does a fireball and the strong extends farther out than it looks, so Itabashi is trying to trade his strong for Ryu’s fireball, which would be great here because that would finally kill Poongko off. Unfortunately Itabashi is a little too far for it to work (although not as far as off as you might think).
3:43: It’s kind of hard to tell if this is the range where Ryu’s jumping roundhouse beats lariat or not. I think Itabashi made a good call in not risking it.
3:56: Ok, so. Why does Itabashi not do ex hand for chip damage? I saw someone post that question, I think in the general SF4 forum. The reason is that he doesn’t get a very good chance. If Itabashi whiffs ex hand, he knows he’s dead; Poongko’s not gonna just watch him fly by and not do anything about it. It might look like 3:46 is a good spot, just as Poongko comes down from that jump, but actually I think Itabashi’s just barely out of range for it to work. I don’t think Itabashi expected this dash-up ex dp; I know I didn’t.
So, interesting match. I think Ryu beats Gief by a little bit. I’ve been thinking about saying that for a long time, maybe 3/4 of a year, but I haven’t come out and said it much. Imo Ryu has a slight advantage in footsies, which hurts because that makes Gief want to jump a little more than he should against a character with retardedly good antiair options like Ryu. Gief also can’t get free fierce splash crossup pressure like he can against most characters, and Ryu has dp fadc into either safety or big ultra combo as well, so Gief’s up-close game isn’t as strong as it is in some other matchups. So, slight loss in footsies and slightly less of an advantage compared to most matchups up close, but the killer is that jump air hurricane kick. Gief could totally go even with or beat Ryu if he could really reap the rewards of the corner, but he can’t, because most of the time Ryu will try to air hurricane out to completely reset the situation.
I’m gonna talk about Itabashi v Pei Hoon’s Sagat sometime soon too. Itabashi plays the Sagat matchup really differently from how I do, so there are some cool things for me in those games.
