You did really well against RF. Very patient and great job taking advantage of that knockdown in the corner.
Against Hisyou, it’s obvious what happened. Round 1 offensive Sagat pounding away at Rufus with no bar for free. If Sagat gets an early knockdown on Rufus 1st Round (or any Round) without bar Rufus becomes a potato hitting bag. Other than that, your Rufus was really solid and it’s hard to comment on it.
Small tip: lk messiah on wake up destroys Sagat’s meaty shorts. If Sagat blocks you find yourself in the same messiah guessing game which isn’t always bad.
Well you got hit with a lot of sonic booms and you didn’t land any s.lk s.hp hp tornado combos. You were able to land throws off of some of your landed dive kicks, but that shouldn’t be your main goal. I liked how you used rufus’ overhead as a mixup, I rarely use it but against guile I can see its use. Your dive kicks are fairly solid, some situations you landed them really high and teched throw, which is good, but its also good to random ex messiah if your opponent techs throws every time you do a high dive kick (You might have done this, I don’t have a photographic memory haha). Guile can be tough if you can’t score a knockdown, and if you aren’t landing the BnBs its really tough. But if you land like 3 BnBs and a dive kick its game over, literally. Practice up on your combos and you will smoke that Guile next time.
Your Rufus is really solid, in the RF match you guessed right and won. In the Hisyou match you guessed wrong and lost. I can watch and say Oh, you shouldn’t have done that. But I would’ve probably done the same thing. You guessed wrong a couple times, missed an anti air (wasn’t really make or break by any means), and lost the first round. The second round you got zoned out really well. What did you take from the match-ups? Aside from Sagat being a dick.
You got really comfortable ex messiah kicking after every cross up dive kick and for some reason the sagat didnt pick up on that. It worked out which is good, but against a better player you want to be less predictable. Also when sagat whiffs uppercuts you should punish with s.hp hp tornado. That last round should have been way closer to over if you had punished with that rather than a throw. Sagat would have had very little health and he would’ve been in the corner.
With the tiger knee pressure. I do two different things depending on the stage of the round and match. If its early in the round I will use c.mp on reaction to trade with the tiger knee. This doesn’t always work and you lose the trade, but it puts space between you so that you can work a new angle to get in. Another thing is what you did. Waiting until you pick up his pattern and then EX messiah. Obviously if you have the meter go with the EX messiah.
I have actually started doing a lot more dive kicks against sagat when I’m up close. I will dive kick for pressure and hope to land a BnB, and if I feel like I’m getting predictable I’ll dive kick then block to try and bait out an uppercut. This technique has worked really well for me (online and offline) against some really good sagats. I know a lot of people are afraid to put pressure on sagat cause they do not want to eat an uppercut then get put into a tiger knee trap, but the only way to win consistently is to make sagats play your game. You want them to be guessing, just like you have to guess on tiger knee pressure.
really liked that tornado fadc mixup u went for, i’ve never tried that. I cant believe he reacted to that though since you had not done it all match. gg’s
I’m pretty sure that Hisyou watched my match with RF and thought “So he’s going to walk in patiently against fireballs. I’ll rush him down then.” I should’ve realised that and been appropriately prepared to defend myself till I got meter. If anything, I learnt more about playing in a team tournament than about the match up per se.
Crouch strong beats LK Messiah though. Its pretty risky unless you’re sure he’s going to do d.LK.
I beat RF, who is arguably one of Japan’s top 3 players (2nd place at Last year’s Nationals, in the Champion team in this year’s nationals, and fourth highest BP in Japan). I don’t get to complain about Sagat ever again.
I watched Kindevu and MDR’s performance at this year’s nationals and it pretty much showed that all of Rufus’s so-called ‘bad’ match ups are very winnable. MDR and Kindevu were beating Grandmaster Sagats all over the place. MDR also beat Daigo and Itazan (OCVed Daigo’s team which consisted of a Ryu, an Akuma and a Sagat… all ‘bad’ match ups for Rufus. I think he also beat Fudo, but I’m not sure.). The most surreal moment was when MDR beat Tokido (Akuma) and I expected Tokido’s team to send Mago (Sagat) next, and instead they sent Akimo (Honda).
Lets think about it for a second- a team has the chance to send a Sagat (arguably the best Sagat in the world) against a Rufus and instead sends a Honda instead. What does that tell you?
1:15: After a an Ex Messiah> LK follow up, MDR does a dive kick which would have been meaty-cross up but it misses because Bonchan didn’t quick recover. MDR then does a whiffed stand LP then another dive kick, which hits perfectly at the meaty-cross up sweet spot.
Very interesting. I guess the whiffed stand LP is the key to timing a meaty cross up if the opponent doesn’t quick recover.
I’ve noticed MDR do this in a few matches. I think he landed the cross up 100% of the time afterward also. Gonna try and apply this to my game since it seems to work with great effect.
Two videos I took back when I was in Tokyo in January. Guy’s name is Ponyo, and he can literally play every character in the arcade to at least a Master ranking. Everyone kept telling him to stop playing Rufus because it was unfair.
Here’s a quick tutorial I threw together for the cross-up dive kick after the ex messiah. It kind of sucks but hopefully someone will get some use out of it. [media=youtube]cjCISBGDMsI[/media]
[media=youtube]diJAeEPAx2k[/media] vs Tony Hawk (A.K.A. your best strategy is to do nothing…)
[media=youtube]cxiWTHQXOIU[/media] ** vs** Guy
[media=youtube]rSR_Wp7ZgIE[/media] vs Ryu (A.K.A. react to fireballs dont predict them)
[media=youtube]kp7pQ4dOcAs[/media] **vs Viper
[media=youtube]0DyYRROYgYI[/media] vs Guile
[media=youtube]Zt9U3Paz_48[/media] vs Blanka
[media=youtube]VpclrXg61ug[/media] ** vs Seth
[media=youtube]ENrQpOD7Aco[/media] vs Ibuki
[media=youtube]DgVlF1whEM8[/media] vs Hawk again (aka how NOT to play against T.hawk)
@Acidicenema: hey, colin (colonov/tanned titties) the guile player, told me he knows you. We live in brisbane/australia. I think he has gone to singapore before. good stuff haha
[media=youtube]tVhITHC1dGM[/media] (Winners Semi-finals vs. Seth)
[media=youtube]4oVllc82HT8[/media] (Winners Finals vs. Honda)
[media=youtube]6UBZXujb8mA[/media] (Grand Finals vs. Juri/Chun)
@ DreamHack Summer in Sweden they will also have a “Swedish Champoinship” Tournament with the 1st and 2nd place winners from the Qualify tournaments which they have around Sweden. Heres one of my matches:
