Listen to to this man. Zone Balrog out. The guy you were fighting against was a jerk. Don’t let the bully sike you out dude. Akuma doesn’t want it with Balrog up close or at mid range. Balrog doesn’t want it with Akuma right outside of mid range or at long range. Fireball him every which way man. Neutral jump in anticipating(or reaction) to his dash punches and always be ready to demon punish. Always anti air him, never let him get free pressure, and when in a bad position, TELEPORT OR COWARD COPTER.
Always make him lose his charge constantly, and when at mid range, BLOCK A LOT. His sweep is probably the best in the entire game and you don’t want to eat that. Focus is a decently high risk, high reward kind of thing, but I would suggest using it to combat his sweep from time to time as well as all of his non focus crushing dash punches. Just throw it in there to keep them honest. Charge the focus and then just backdash. Let them know that they not only have to worry about a barrage of ground and air fireballs, but that as well.
On knockdown, vortex Balrog like it’s about to be patched in the next version of SF4 and this is your last chance to abuse it. Cross up tatsu, fake cross j.mk, empty jump throw, empty jump low, demon flip throw, fake cross peak jump d.mk(dive kick), etc, etc. Balrog does not want it with the vortex, trust me. End your combos with sweep as much as possible(unless it’s going to win you the match, or put him in the corner, then don’t. use his srk finisher instead) so you can restart your vortex.
Besides the obvious vortex, Balrog is free on wake up as far as meaties are concerned, c.lp beats everything he does outside of an ex headbutt, which Akuma recovers from way before Balrog’s ex headbutt even comes out, giving you a free punish. c.mk meaty works the same, except ex dash punches beat that and so does ex headbutt.
Oh, and PLEASE block the overhead and punish him hard. That move is gimmicky and pretty easy to react to as long as you’re paying attention. Throw or c.mk,fierce shoryu OR demon him out of all of his ex dash punches.
Don’t be so worried about creating momentum vs Balrog. As others have articulated, this guy seems to want you to rush him down and get in his face and that’s simply NOT the way you want to play the match. Your momentum will come from knockdowns and playing a safe, safe game. The dude wants you to play his game, Balrog’s game. Screw that. You beat a character by taking away what they want to do and their best options. Balrog wants to be close and at mid range so he can utilize his ridiculous normals and footsies for massive damage, so you zone the shit out of him and constantly make him lose his charge. Akuma is arguably the best in the game taking away every character in the game’s best options. This is why Ryu is his hardest match up and his shakiest 5/5. He’s so versatile and perfect(as shin akuma pointed out), that he can be played many different ways and you can’t really take away what he wants to do, because he wants to do whatever works and he’s capable of doing so vs any character in the game. He’s like a GPS system. If one direction doesn’t work, he easily goes a different route without much of a fuss vs anyone in the game. So Ryu is probably the only character in the game Akuma can’t really stifle consistently.
Sorry for going off on a Ryu tangent, just fought Chris Hu yesterday and lost 10-5, lol.
But yea, the way this fight goes down is basically whoever is the first to get a fairly big lead is going to lose 85% of the time. It’s not like other fights for both characters where a comeback is a strong reality. If Balrog has a lead and decides he’s going to turtle you hardcore, you’re going to have to work very hard to get anything going. The same applies him for, but it’s probably even harder for him if you play smart.
Hope some of this helped.
