Depends on the Honda player’s style, but generally, most good Honda players will apply pressure with jab into hands. If you see this coming and the player establishes this pattern, you can try back dashing away or using EX Soul Spiral, though my results with EX Soul Spiral as a reversal have been widely varying. I haven’t tried to use it to beat HHS out yet, but I imagine to beat it out you’d have to time it right before the HHS comes out.
For the most part, if you can force Honda to jump over Soul Sparks, you have an advantage. Since Honda’s jf.HP alters his hitbox, c.HP isn’t as reliable as it was before. You can still beat jump in HP with c.HP, but it seems to trade a lot more and most, if not all trades are in Honda’s favor.
However, you can use Rose’s df.MK slide to get under Honda and force a throw tech or beat out his HHS/Ochio throw/Sumo Slam (any version except EX) with a properly time s.MK.
As far as Honda’s Sumo Slam spam goes, you can c.HP his HP and MP versions on the way down, but have limited options against his LP and EX versions. I believe you can focus dash the hit on the way down, but it’d probably be hard to do on wake up. From what I’ve seen, EX Soul Throw beats out all of his Sumo Slams on the way up. Be careful not to eat an ochio throw if you get into the habit of blocking all of his Sumo Slams.
In this match up I use Ultra 1 to keep Honda from spamming relatively safe headbutts when I don’t have meter and to limit his jump ins. Forcing Honda to play from full screen to about mid screen is to your advantage, as Rose doesn’t deal enough damage to go toe to toe with Honda.
One last thing about Honda. Beware his cross up MP, c.LP, LP Ochio throw/HHS. Most times you can safely avoid this by simply focus dashing out of the cross up situation, but there are certain times when I haven’t been able to escape cleanly and ended up eating a good chunk of damage as a result.
Now, I propose a question:
When in the corner, how do you escape Bison’s LKxxLK Scissor Kick frame trap with Rose? I’ve tried using EX Soul Spiral, but it gets stuffed by the Scissor Kick. I thought c.MP would beat out Bison’s c.LK, but it got beat out every time or simply didn’t come out at all, thus putting me in the loop all over again. Was I just timing it wrong?