Ok, I figured it out. Looks like I tend to input a forward/up after the lariat motion, and with hugo that causes the lariat not to come out. I just need to clean up my inputs then.
Great, I think this is a contrived suggestion, but if you want to have pretty clean inputs, practice kof13. Hugo’s almost the only character who’s inputs need to be pretty tight (well probably not the only one) since he has so many overlapping directional inputs for specials and KOF makes it really clear that when they say half circle you have to do a half circle none of this 3/4 bullshit lol.