vs Ryu
My opinion 4.5-5.5
Pretty even match here, the slight advantage goes to Ryu for overall damage and better space control. The reason it’s not a complete 6-4 in his favor is because of Ken’s tools/option, and fair enough space control to play some defense and stall if he’s in the lead. It’s a battle of fundamentals, you just have to know what your advantages and weaknesses are. Knowing both characters well (like in any match up) will help you in decision-making. Good zoning will be mandatory if you want to have fun in this match up, otherwise the Ryu player can just spot this and keep you out for the match. I’ll split this into a few sections…
Zoning/Distance game : It requires a bit more thinking, and reading tendencies will get you wins for sure. You have to have the patience and know-how when playing this zoning ‘game’. So first up, let’s get rid of the amateur randomness that sometimes occurs. Let’s say they want to be cool and try to tatsu over your fireball. On these type of players, all you have to do is simple wait, and crouch shoryu (fierce or EX if you have meter to spare). From there, either they should stop doing it, or you just repeat until they get the point. A big part of basic zoning is realizing when you’re in jump range. You can do a few things here, but usually the safest thing to do is abort fireballing and poke them. Fireballing keeps that out, but it’s unsafe to jumps at that range. Depending on the range and when they throw fireballs, as well as their knowledge of zoning…you can walk up like you’re about to poke, then jump at them and hit their fireball. Jumping is always risky, a good player will always just uppercut you. Once you make that jump, you’re risking getting anti aired for sure. If you didn’t jump a fireball right, you deserve to catch that uppercut. That’s why you want to save jumps for when you get a good read on the opponent. But even some top players jump early on in the game, just to get a read and see if they are respecting the jump enough.
So when you abort fireballing to footsie, you go into that zone. You can still fireball here, in fact it’s still used very often from both sides. Fierce fireball is a poke in itself, it will beat poorly spaced pokes just out of range…or you can poke with it if you spaced yourself out of their range. As for much in this match up goes, everything can pretty much be vice versa, so keep that in mind.
Now that we’ve gotten into that poking range, it’s not necessarily a huge advantage as it is say…vs Sagat. But that’s the trade off. Sagat is harder/riskier to close in one, but Ryu is better up close. Anyways…you pretty much want to use your low forward into fireball (beware of his ultra). It beats his focus, pushes him back, and your low forward is faster than his. You want to have good spacing, and good judgment. So if he’s not doing anything, if he’s trying to walk back and land that sweep…you want to close that distance, push him to the corner, or step kick into that range. Step kick is very helpful in this match, as long as you know when to use it. If they are fishing for low forward fireballs, or low strongs, you want to space around and catch them with your low forward fireballs all day. Not that it will combo at a far range, but it’s your safest bet to go with. Another alternative, especially if you need to make a comeback, is using your sweep. It’s pretty good, but lacks some distance. It does give you the untechable knockdown, and can still catch low forwards and most definitely his sweeps if your reactions are on point.
Landing the step kick : here are some quick notes to remember while landing this
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Option select bait DP into kara throw : Basically, this counters reversal shoryuken and blocking. After a close, but not point blank landed step kick…you can block, then kara throw them. Dragonboy likes to walk back a step then kara throw them.
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Fierce shoryu counter hit FADC ultra : Very common setup, but still a good one once you get the other options worked in. Notable, and deserves its mention.
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Cross up forward/short tatsu : Depending on the range, this can be really good. If you do a quick short tatsu around them, you can bait their uppercut and hit them once. Cross up forward is risky against someone who can shoryuken on both sides. But not many can do this, so save for the higher level players 
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Spacing then low forward fireball : You will lose if you do this instantly. That’s why I mentioned spacing. You wait for their limb to come out then you react with yours, footsies.
That should be enough for close range tactics. You may see your opponent’s Ryu do more low strongs than you, but your low forward is fast enough to stop walk up throw attempts…so that doesn’t get too much of a mention. st.strong is always a good normal, but in this match up…it doesn’t shine as much because Ryu’s low attacks just go under it. Far st.roundhouse is a beefy counter hit to Ryu’s low forward, but you can get this jumped and it won’t be pretty. Use that one sparingly. As mentioned earlier, sweep is great if you have the proper distance and good reaction for it.
I felt like the zoning section was a bit brief so I’ll go back on that. Here are some tips :
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Reversal fireball from blocked fireball when you get pushed out of jump range : It can help, good momentum shifter/null. But, keep in mind if this gets too predictable…the opponent can just tatsu over. So, as everything when zoning, use with caution.
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Neutral jump late kara tatsu on the way down : You don’t HAVE to kara, but if you can kara regular tatsu, it pushes you forward a bit. Do this when your fireballs are trading and you’re about to get hit. Good momentum reset, and if you get pushed into jump range, you can jump and full combo those bad-timed fireballs.
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Max range jump roundhouse : A very useful tool. At this range, you can’t get uppercutted. You can land jump roundhouse into sweep, or if you have the meter into low forward EX tatsu. Unfortunately, the regular tatsu is too far and uncombos at this range. Find this range, practice it, and use it to your advantage.
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Kara focus : If you time it on a fireball it’s great. You can shoryu or throw the recovery of the fireball animation if you did it close enough. It’s in good use after the neutral jump kara regular tatsu on the way down. You don’t want to abuse this though, you can lose chunks of life if you’re out of distance and get counter poked, or just tapped after that absorption in general.
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Neutral jump, jump back : A defensive staller. Mix this in with other options, it can kill time when you have the lead and are close to milking the clock. However, don’t rely on this on about 40 seconds +. It’s because comebacks can happen so fast from Ryu, and you don’t wanna give him enough time to think of a plan to get that.
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Forward jump from full screen on reaction to a fireball : An aggressive way to close the distance without getting uppercutted. Also good because it’s out of his roundhouse range and low forward xx fireball range so he can’t stick that out when you’re landing. Also, if he ALWAYS sticks it out on your landing, you can uppercut him but it’s very risky. So use wisely. It doesn’t have to be full screen, more like 4/5 of the screen is acceptable. You can even walk back to this range, then jump over a fireball on purpose to get closer than just walking and blocking.
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Walking and blocking : The good, the basic, the effective. A good fundamental that shouldn’t be forgotten.
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Neutral jump, jump EX kara tatsu 3/4 of the screen away : If they’re carelessly throwing fireballs from a far range thinking they’re safe, smack them with this. It’s called the shooting star, Dr. Chaos showed me how to use this right :karate:.
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EX fireball : Probably the technique you would use the least. Reason being is that it does no damage, probably only good to chip away slowly at health at the last pixels of the game. A good way to use this is during a fireball trade. But that’s obvious, so you can do something like tap down, then let it out and they will either jump on it or thought you didn’t do anything so it will go through their fireball and hit theirs. This thing is near useless full screen though, as the opponent can just throw a fireball into it, then neutral jump. Try from just outside of jump range.
Lastly, we’ll go to his knockdown scenarios.
A simple concept you want to remember, is to just not blow your lead away. An example of taking an ultra on purpose, while calculatingly doing so is when Daigo took Abel’s ultra by purposely throwing a fireball into it. He knew he would still be in the lead after it, but did it for a reason. It’s because if Justin Wong landed a few mix ups, THEN his ultra, he would have won the game or be put in a winning position. So it’s something to consider.
An example of blowing your lead is going for a tick throw when he has 2 bars and ultra. This is very bad, as you’re giving him 2 chances to DP FADC ultra you. A more educated guess would be to raw throw him. They would think that because they have meter stocked, you wouldn’t dare to do that. But you only gave them 1 chance to DP FADC ultra, and if they weren’t expecting it, you are put in a finishing position with safe options. Jump short around his head area will beat his fierce shoryu and others clean. An example of this is when you cr.short cr.jab into fierce shoryu, then jump over with short over his head. You can beat it and then continue the combo. Another very safe option is to short tatsu around them. It’s very hard to double sided shoryu this. The reason for that is because, when they try this on reversal…the double sided shoryu will actually come out in front, but you will tatsu over them.
Finally, there are the basic OST, and option select throws from DP FADC on reversal. You may want to wait it out more and finish the game off of zoning where your chances are greater. Because some players will do a non-reversal, aka delayed DP FADC which will get OST’s and such. Again, when going back to zoning with the lead, eliminate the options where he can make a comeback.
I feel like I’ve typed a lot, and it isn’t everything. Hopefully everything else can come by with experience for everyone else. There’s a counter to everything in this match, for both sides. It is one of the more fun matches to play, moreso than Zangief/Balrog/Sagat/Akuma out of the top tiers. So have fun :clown:
