The Ryu vs Guile debate has been as old as the SF2 days itself, overall, the consensus has always been that within Hyper Fighting, Ryu has had the slight advantage over Guile.
Remember, this is at the Top-Tier status level, in which case, how many of us can truly be at that level today?
The Ryu sweep on Guile c.mk was something that the strongest Ryu players at that time could do, and consistently. However it isn’t just that, however if you can find some videos of an old and out of his prime Tomo playing a Guile player on HF as Ryu. You can see how he forces Guile to the corner, where Ryu without question has the advantage to barrage him with projectiles while staying outside of his best pokes.
Hurricane Kick over Sonic Boom was definitely viable, however nobody would spam this, it just had to land once or at most twice, which would already put a Guile player into second guessing on their sonic booms.
At full screen range, Ryu has the projectile advantage easily, to even the mid-range point, and this is another advantage to him because he can force Guile to him. It only becomes more even when Guile is within range to backfist in a fireball trade or his c.mk.
However at that range, Ryu can also play the footsie game since unlike his SFV counterpart who overall has trash footsie buttons, HF Ryu has powerful footsie buttons, and c.lk which can stuff c.mk, and or the c.fk sweep on whiff Guile c.mk along with hurricane over boom.
Although Watson does say that one should never ever jump against a Guile, because you will get anti-aired. We should consider that Watson is more than likely speaking from his experience taking on Tomo Ohiras Guile…which was/is the Best Guile on the planet during the Golden Era of Hyper Fighting.
Even Watson made a statement on srk back in the early-mid 2000s of where he would play a 100 set match in a HF mirror match of Ryu vs Ryu against Tomo back during the height of HF, and get stomped 70-30. Watson at that time would have easily been one of the Top-3 Ryu players on the planet, arguably #2 only after Tomo.
I don’t know if they still have the old debates from way back in the early 90s when the internet was young and yes, people were already arguing the Ryu vs Guile debate back then. I am sure they’re still around on the internet, and if you do find them, the consensus even back then, when everyone was playing Hyper Fighting 24/7 and it was being broken down like crazy, most agreed that Ryu had the advantage over Guile.
Hyper Fighting to me, is easily my most beloved SF game of all time, such a shame father time has taken over, and priorities have changed.
Still the best SF game of all time if you ask me.
