This is probably one of the matchups I find particularly difficult. Landing a karakusa on hugo is hard enough, as you’d often end up eating 360 or 720. Every whiffed hayate, ditto punishment. The worst situation I find is when you’re in the corner, and makoto doesn’t really have any effective wakeups.
Hugo has a lot of high priority normals like crouch :mk:, standing/crouching :lp: and the :mp: slap, making it difficult to get close.
Any tactics advice?
i cant stress enough how her dashing helps, i actually play her quite wild, but i look alot first, when I see a Ken whiff his c.mk or c.hk, i usually dash in karakusa, or you can just jab, karakusa/hayate/chop/whatever the hell you want, and hugo has slow pokes, just watch out for the clap, and if youre close, jump back mk, perhaps hp works too, not too sure.
And if you cant dash in between the claps, just hayate him, or better, EX hayate, just time it well, and youll be able to get him in the corner
Crouching Roundhouse. Sweep. Forward kick. EX Axe Kicks. Try dodging 360’s with twd+Roundhouse, if you know how to set it up. (Karakusa, Fierce xx Jab Hayate [held for a split second to push Hugo farther away], then twd+Roundhouse for the extra space to dodge the 360, hold Roundhouse so her walking sweep doesn’t come out, then get the next Karakusa.)
Also, jump-back Fierce to counter Back-Breaker and throw attempts. In and out, in and out, control the distance and punish consistently. You MUST work on your long-range footsie game against Hugo to win (but you won’t win WITH it if the Hugo is smart, instead you’ll scare the Hugo away from fighting long-range against you and force him to try crazy shit to move in closer.)
DooM, yeah her dashing is useful. But most of the time, I end up getting tripped by Hugo’s crouch :mk: since it comes out rather quickly.
Arlieth, wouldn’t you fall into the 360 range if you did the twd+roundhouse? I find that with some characters, if you stick out a move at nearly the same time as a 360/720 (even when you’re about a character distance away), Hugo can still punish. Last time this happened was against a Jap Hugo player who was banging heads in London Trocadero. I was using Yun, and stuck out a long-range poke with cr.mk at the same time he did a 720, and I ate it bad 
I would say “Shut up and try it” but I realize twd+Roundhouse is counter-intuitive to most people.
Anyways… shut up and try it. =D I know what the hell I’m talking about. Set it up that way and you’ll see for yourself.
I played against a Hugo last night. Landed karakusa, st.fierce -> held jab hayate. Yes it pushed him back a little further, but I still ate 360 when he recovered…
Rise from your grave.
I’m lucky enough to have a third strike cab in work, we’re running a little tournament at the moment and the only person I’m likely to have trouble with is a Hugo player.
Can his crouch MK be punished by anything she has?
After landing hayate, do I have time to backdash out of a 360?
In general, am I better getting up in his face, or trying to stick to defense and punishment?
A bit vague I know, but any advice would be excellent.
As far as cr.MK is concerned, I doubt she has anything to punish his blocked sweep unless it’s close-range(but no decent Hugo would sweep that close anyway).
A Hayate that connects will give her time to jump away. I’ve seen Kens reversal SA3 a Hayate on hit though, so I’m going to assume the weaker the punch, the safer it is when it connects.
It’s like Arlieth said: controlling space. Rushing down blindly isn’t smart to do against Hugo because one blocked Hayate = free 360/720. You want to fight from a certain distance(basically outside of Hugo’s 360/720 range…which is actually not as far as some people think), which Makoto can do well because of her decent far-range pokes and that damn cr.HK(perfect for anti-air or just ground poke). Her ground game shines in this matchup because she’s just generally faster than Hugo in almost everything. Just be careful of Claps, and try to keep Hugo from doing stupid shit that could end up killing you because you didn’t punish.