How does Balrog deal with Blanka electricity? Only a few normals beat it at max range, it hits fast enough to counter all of Balrog’s armored moves, and headbutts go right over Blanka while he’s doing it. It almost seems like Blanka can just mash it for free at close range and totally shut down anything Balrog can do.
You can do a couple of things, mostly what you said earlier is the safest. Buttons at max distance like cr.mk, cr.lp, cr.hk etc are really good buttons. Electricity doesn’t break armor unless its a reversal so armored moves do work, but generally not well enough. If you don’t get caught up with the proximity blocking, You can do Ultra/super up close. You can never do headbutt because it low profiles and Blanka’s hurtbox is generally too low for headbutt at a distance anyway on recovery. So if it whiffs, punish it with jab or one of the other buttons i mentioned. You can throw him too but that’s incredibly risky.
Electricity doesn’t do much from neutral, it just makes him a tougher target to hit. On it’s own it’s not a really excellent tool it’s what else he does around it that should be the bigger focus, if Blanka can sit next to you and electric thunder all day you’ve lost the overall fight already. Blanka gets plus frames off of you blocking it, but if it whiffs, blanka is at a disadvantage because you can poke him relatively safely and he has to block or get hit.