You can use ultra 1 to punish lariat its also good 4 catching zangiefs backdash i’ve done it many times.
you CAN punish his lariat with Souless but wouldn’t one need to time it late as to make it not whiff in his upper hitbox invincibility? If this is the case then it would be really hard considering he can do 2 different lariats…
In the case of punishing lariot with ultra, would have to argue that breathless is FAR better in that there isn’t any strict timing restrictions…
as for back dash, considering that breathless is faster i’d have to say the same thing…
Its more of just not being too close to Gief wen he does lariat so you can do Souless its pretty obvious wen he does lariat whether its the kick or punch version and his backdash is slow enough to the point were u can react to and punish with an array of options like dash fwrd TT, COD, or option select sweep, whiffed meaty LP-and hit him with step kick into the rest of abels BnB its in the guide it serves as an OS the LP will not connect, gief will still be backdashing.
Well then, enough with Gief, we’ll save this conversation for later, right now we should focus on Sagat!
PIRATE SOAP! PIRATE SOAP! PIRATE SOAP!
Both Sagat and Abel players are more or less agreed that if this match up goes to either character, it’s Abel. While this may be the case, I have yet to see the light… 
No fancy argument or fake insights from me… I have some personal problems with turtling or playing slow, so that might be my folly.
What are some key things in this match? For those of you who feel this match up is in fact in Abel’s favor why would you say so? and for those of you who think sagat has the advantage, same question.
From my experience:
IIRC his low forward into pirate soap is a true block string
His tiger knee pressure is very good, maybe i’m not throwing out buttery TT enough?
Can’t jump against this guy unless I’m feeling lucky…
At where I am in my understanding of this match, I don’t feel as if Abel is at a significant advantage.
I think abel vs sagat is pretty much equal because sagat can keep abel out very well, but once in, abel can wreck havok.
once you knockdown sagat, i feel he does not fair well vs abel’s mixups.
Like abel has a lot of options that make him safe and i think all his safe jumps work vs him.
Sagat’s hitbox is huge so abel’s crossup sometimes doesn’t crossup(i dunno if this is good or bad lol)
And i think abel has a fairly easy unblockableish setup vs sagat( i think HFX made a vid on that)
Plus his backdash is pretty slow so you can react to it with step kick if your ready.
Getting in tho…inch your way in and corner him??? lol that is pretty much what i do.
I just walk and block and sooner or later the sagat gets obvious with fireballs i roll into cr jab/cr kick/TT/or block if i think he gonna upper Or if spacing is right, just jump fwd into combo. And if he cornered, he does not have much options but to upper or jump out, so its cool. upper can be baited and its pretty easy to AA jumps when you have the other guy cornered cuz you are controlling the spacing.
but yeah, this is coming from a scrub abel~~~
I think Abel has a slight advantage in that match. He can roll past fireballs so long range isn’t a problem. Mid range sagat has hk which does more damage than Abel’s lk and mp. lk, mp and sweep keeps Sagat from spamming hk however and gives him more options to get to close range. Sagat is one of the few characters that Abel can fuck up from anywhere on the screen. a step kick that hits is guaranteed dmg. Besides his lk and tiger knee pressure (and focus and dp) Sagat has nothing. And while it may sound like a lot, they’re not very reliable with DP being the most reliable once Sagat has meter to fadc it. Basically at close range the sense I get from Sagat is one of “I wanna get away”. It just seems like heavy discomfort due to Abel’s damage options and Sagat’s lack of mobility. And it’s that overwhelming sense of close range control that I think wins the match for Abel.
Wait…are you guys suggesting Sagat vs Abel is either even or slightly in Abel’s favor? Wow… either you guys don’t know how to play the match-up, or you’re playing vs Bonchan all the time. :shake:
Abel vs Sagat is 6.5-3.5 or 7-3, FREE. I don’t think I’ve lost to a Sagat, ever, I don’t even remember losing a match, let alone a set. Ask RF and Bonchan how that shit went 
You just need to learn how to not get hit with random pokes and how to get just outside your step kick range and stay there. I could do a write up for this match if requested, but I honestly don’t see how that would be necessary, this match-up is easy as shit as it is.
Sagat is as easy to handle as Dhalsim?
Sure, a write up would be awesome.
I’ve always felt that the different play styles are what makes some of the match-ups easier or harder from one person to the next. Heck, I think fighting Feilong is a much easier fight than Bison who consistently gives me a hard time. So, for example for Bison if they are turtling and/or keeping away as I attempt to bring the fight to them, then that gives me a hell of a time as I try to find their timing, meanwhile they are poking away with faster walk speed and scoring damage.
On the other hand, with players like Feilong where they tend to be very offensive I have an easier time punishing, closing distances or baiting, and when I do gain the life lead then can keep a certain distance away from them and manage avoiding their CW with neutral jumps or sting them with s.mp, rekka pressure at a distance is much easier to deal with, step kick hit or block and back-dash for a whiffed dp, the match just ‘feels’ easier overall.
Anyways, just thought I’d share my thoughts as I have the same problem with some matches that are in Abel’s favor and the discussions just hit my withered memory bank. If I may, I would like to chime in on Sagat from my personal experience as I feel that sometimes the missing ingredients is just a matter of knowing some punishes to make life just a tinny tiny bit easier, but in some cases that little bit can amount to something big in a round.
I would resist the urge to dash-in and eat Sagat’s 2 hit HK all day, hehe I remember doing this. I tend to stay at sweep range and trip them ALOT and I usually fall into this position as I make use of my lk rolls from quite a distance from the screen over fireballs which puts me about mid screen. After that I hold off rolling any further towards the King, which sets me up to be within sweep or step-kick range which I can use as a follow-up, but at first its important to get a general “lay of the land” and not hit buttons to see their responses as you will be eating tiger knees/shorts/HKs/Kara-DPs at mid range or closer, alternatively you can jump in with lp and reset Sagat’s HK anti-air when you feel they are HK happy.
The pressure on the tiger knee isn’t too bad as they attack you from mid range or a distance and you block in response, most like using light versions of TK in which case you can grab using lp TT, but if they space this attack well enough then they can generally follow-up with a normal attack and you’ll get clipped, so you can also stick out s.mp or back-dash in those cases for a lesser gamble punish. Sagat’s non-kara’d DPs tend to whiff quite a bit on Abel’s back-dash so use it to bait them here and there. Still, DP happy Sagats use meter a ton with their back-dash so I still play a little more conservative up close and think twice about pressing buttons when I see they have 2 stocks meter when I’m in their face, at that point I just become conscious about my late crouch techs as Sagats can frame trap you enough if he gains the offensive momentum and keep you from blinking, but nonetheless it can be relatively easy to keep up with the rhythm of their attacks, so when you feel the ‘delay’ on that forward attack pressure then pause for a brainwave longer before hitting that throw because it is probably a trap!
Mash on tech throw and you’ll eat it. Anyways, last thing I can think of is that a blocked first hit of COD without a follow-up is safe against Sagat’s DP it seems like. I’m not a frame data guy, just go with the flow of the game and what makes sense based on what I see and currently my senses tell me that it feels about right.
Sorry about the long post, just had some spare time today. 
EDIT: Forgot to mention that you can soulless Sagat in the corners of the screen, there is really no limitations with his huge hitbox. Hell, you can even roll into Ultra, Sagat’s huge hitbox is what makes landing step-kick on him a ton easier.
IMO Abel just beats Sagat so bad in footsies, you can just walk him to the corner
fighting sagat is less annoying than fighting dhalsim, though that may be because my dhalsim practice is fchamp.
Between low forward, st. strong, and step kick, you beat all of his normals for free, for more damage. In order to attempt to counter this, he has to use fireballs for footsies. You should understand why this is a horrible proposition against abel. You can literally win this matchup without using any sort of knockdown pressure, but just for the hell of it, he’s fat as shit and has a slow uppercut, so he’s even more susceptible to pressure than a lot of the cast.
Losing to sagat means that you’re getting outplayed, straight up. Even accounting for a difference in player skill, sagat has to guess right so many times, in so many situations, that even a mediocre abel could random it out if you understand how the fight goes. As a counterpoint to this statement, i’d like to mention that i lost to john choi’s sagat at the last ncr. Apparently catching fireballs with my face isn’t a winning strategy, who knew.
For fun Warawk recently started playing with Sagat and we had a couple matches…
Alright, I guess I was wrong, this match up is pretty smooth for Abel…
My favorite thing about that match was his slower wake up. Those two extra frames made the timing for using step kick after a post TT, medium roll cross up to beat wake up throws, Alot easier!
The ultra working in the corner is nice…
but what i’m still not convinced about is the footsies…
Reacting to his forward like kick, that little forward stepping kick thing is easy… given, however everything wasn’t so.
do you guys find whiff punishing his st. forward and roundhouse doable? I couldn’t seem to connect low forward against his roundhouse… It seemed to me that footsies got ALOT harder once he stopped throwing out that kara kick and started using st forward alot more.
Inching him to the corner got harder once he started using that safe tiger knee pressure…
hopefully some strong sagats show up at scr so I can take some notes on your guys’ matches. 
You can cr.mk his st.mk though it is harder, but I guess then its time to bust out that ex CoD. lol
hmm… Got destroyed by Fei long yesterday and I realized a couple things I never really thought about before that i wanna vent about…
[LIST]
[*]While the Heavy version of his 1st rekka has more range… and does more damage, it’s -8 on block… however if Fei cancels into the jab version of his 2nd rekka… he becomes -6…
[/LIST]
so… if he got a little sloppy with the first rekka… he can make it safer by adding the 2nd one??? That’s insane! Imagine if Abel’s 2nd COD could be safer than the first
I believe it was Ronnin? that pointed it that it can always be punished by standing MP…
[LIST]
[*]When fei blows through 2 EX rekkas… A follow up cr jab will beat out jumps… the opponent MUST continue blocking or risk fei getting another rekka combo… Abel’s EX Cod gets blown up by Fei’s cr jab xx Rekka… so he has to continue blocking
[/LIST]
[LIST]
[*]…another thing… when Fei sucessfully lands his rekka combo… as soon as he can, if he dashes and then throws a fierce rekka… it seems to be a meaty. So basically, the opponenet MUST continue blocking… or they eat another Rekka Combo!
[/LIST]
???Is there a character that puts his opponent in the corner faster than Fei Long? Fei can put anybody in the corner by touching them at a minimum of twice… and a maximum of 3 times… When he’s in the corner he can abuse abel by spamming cr mp into the first rekka over and over… his overhead is -4 so it’s perfect for abusing on abel…???
not to mention that cr lk xx Ex Tension… because he needs this move!
I’m glad his Chicken wing is getting a damage nerf…
I don’t like how now in AE Fei can throw out a DP FADC on wake up as a DEFENSIVE strat while, IF IT HIT, having the follow option of throwing out his chicken wing for an extra 120 damage…
Fei’s just want to get out of pressure… but hey, if it works out… he can throw out something that does more damage than the dp…
Between his invicibile DP… and invincibility on his chicken wings… I find myself more scared of applying pressure to fei than most other characters…
Take those DP and Chicken Wings like a man!
Just thought I’d share that, didn’t want to make a new thread for it though. Motivate yourselves to get better!
cool sketch man.
For those of you who are struggling with the sagat match up the numbers gustavo gave are about right. someone also mentioned playstyles can result a different outcome. I agree with you, but as an abel player you need to learn how to switch up your style fucken fast. That what makes a great player… none the less its necessary when you play abel to be able to switch it up. The numbers i put up on the guide are all obviously from IPW, but i agree with gustavo. If you guys are worried about his dp i suggest learning gustavos anti shoto tactix. Learn to delay back throw off of a step kick. also if your gonna 50/50 and your not sure if hes gonna dp… apply delayed cr. tech. it will tech a throw but if they dp you block and if they do nothing… well free pressure i guess. This fight requires patience dont expect to just DO THAT SHIT and get in. walk forward. once you get in sags free… also if he blocks ur first rekka and u stop there… its a 5 fr start up… cant punish you. NUFF SAID.
sorry the 5fr part… i meant to put DP’s a 5fr start up so my bad if you didnt quite get it and i was in a rush since my wife was honking outside. As for footsies i use st lk and cr. mk and obvious i use step kick if im spaced correctly. I havnt had the opportunity to quite play godlike sagats like gustavo has, but to take his side i dont think ive ever lost to a sagat player either lol. The match up is just so bad for sagat. The reason i mentioned delayed back throw and delayed cr tech above is because YOU CAN NOT BE AFRAID to strike sagat. once you get in the pressure is on and must stay on. If justin wong can do it with rufus… u can do it with abel.
shoutouts to breathelss being really good again…
Gone are the days of reacting to Balrog’s dash punches, hoping for it not to be a low punch…
Gone are the days of reacting to a honda headbutt with ultra, only to have it lose to his EX version…
Breathless… I can hear them complaining already