There is one solution. if you block and then hold up back on the second frame you block claps and jump SPDs. Saw it in that roundtable discussion with diago, tokido, bonchan, kaz and someone else.
Easier said than done though for mere mortals 
Yes, if hugo is right next to you, youâre gonna have to guess. There is no option that covers everything. This is also no different from every other grappler in every other game. A big reason why gouken and juri are such bad matchups for hugo is because of their angled projectiles. He canât really jump over them. You can create this effect with cody by simply holding on to rocks. The rocks arenât that effective vs other grapplers because of condor dive, ex green hand, slide. But against hugo they are great because he doesnât have a similar move to get through projectiles on reaction. If your main answer to get through projectiles is to focus dash forward, youâre looking at a pretty uphill battle.
he can just do his knee hop on reaction to rocks WHILE walking towards you. (itâs really not that hard.) Youâre losing ground/space/positioning and Hugo is one step closer to you. The longer you hold rocks, the more Hugo walks/dashes towards you.
and why wouldnât you focus dash forward against rocks? you gain meter and youâre a bit closer. He has life to spare.
Focus dash forward is never the solution to projectiles. Its okay throwing out every now and then but they cant be your solution to a projectile game. Or else zangief would have solved that sagat matchup 5 years ago. I can see that Iâm not gonna convince you of the matchup. Iâm just going by my experience. And the hugos Iâve played against have a real hard time dealing with changing your timing on the rocks. Hugos can also knee hop over juri and goukens projectiles and those are probably his worst matchups. Of course there are other reasons for that, but their projectiles are a big reason why those matchups are bad
iâm not saying focus dash is the answer to all. but itâs an option against Cody. for slower projectiles you still have clap which also moves you forward and not recovering forever.
Just talking specifically in the Cody match. He has ways around rocks that doesnât consist of jumping and theyâre pretty decent options. Add that to the fact he has a good amount of health to waste and thereâs no reason you wouldnât take some damage to get in and knock Cody down because that might make/break the round.
Zangiefâs forward dash is 26F, Hawkâs is 23F. IIRC Hugoâs is 20F. There is a big difference in viability for focus dash forward with those speeds.
Tried that, but couldnât get anything going with it. Iâm pretty sure Hugoâs reach is better than the knifeâs, and trading is not great for Cody. Picking the knife up in the first place is an issue too - you donât want to be walking towards Hugo at the start of the round.
Hugo has options that the other grapplers donât have. Clap is a completely different proposition to spire/greenhand, he is significantly more difficult to anti-air safely, he can combo into sweep, he can combo into super, he can combo into Ultra, he has overheads (which he can combo off of), he has an armoured normal, he has meterless projectile invincible move that advances him forward, his forward dash is way better, he can standing 720 more easily (guy did this to me twice in the space of a few games)âŚ
The other problem is that once he knocks you down, if you guess wrong youâre in exactly the same situation again regardless of whether he uses SPD, backbreaker, lariat, sweep etc., and his damage output is better than the other grapplers.
uhâŚknife does wonders against Grapplers especially someone like hugo. But whatever. no one picks up the knife as it is anyway so iâm not going to explain anymore.
The match isnât hard until Cody gets knocked down just like on any grappler in this game.
The knife is godlike in grappler matchups. Cr.lp combined with far.hk and you shouldnât have too much issues with Hugo. Especially with far.mp hitting twice to stuff that armor move he has. As long as your whiff punishing is on point and you maintain spacing, shouldnât have too much problems until you get knocked down of course .
I definitely need to pick up the knife more. It really helps when you have the life lead in other match ups and want to lame out the opponent. That extra range you get helps out so much. I wish there was like ex pick up so I could focus and still maintain the knife.
I pick the knife up all the time, but itâs so unreliable and Hugoâs reach is massive.
Step up your spacing game.
Gotta make sure your spacing is on point and youâre not just randomly throwing out normals for hugo to cr.MP/st.MP. Let him make the move and react to what he does. You can literally stand there and do nothing for a few seconds and see what anyone does.
and for whatever reason. 9/10 people jump right after you grab the knife. Thatâs a free cr.HP.
@"Shin Oni"â I like that youâre staying strong about the knife, lol. UnfortunatelyâŚpeople hate it.
I love the knife.
While Iâm at it I might as well increase my reaction time, improve my execution and learn to make better reads as well! Itâs all so simple now 
In all seriousness though, I donât think itâs an open and shut case vs. Hugo. He can focus dash through far hk and knife far hp much more easily than Gief/Hawk, and killing him with cr.lp and mp is going to require a hell of a lot of hits. And as you pointed out you lose the knife if you focus. Double hitting mp would beat the armoured elbow presumably, but doesnât EX lariat have multiple hits of armour?
Well, everyone has their own opinions on matchups. I was just stating mine from my experience with a ton of hugos online and off. Ive never lost to a hugo player after week 1. And pretty much every match has looked the same.
Just play conservatively. Keep him away and react to his buttons and movement. Go into training mode and learn his ranges for cr.lk, s.Mp and learn to whiff punish with both regular normals and knife normals.
You also need to realize you canât keep him away by always walking back. Just like guile needs to throw out some. S.hk in gief matchups, it doesnât hurt to throw out a properly spaced Crack kick.
Also delaying your rocks helps out a ton.
Of course, and if youâre doing well against him thatâs great. But if every match looks the same then itâs unlikely youâre playing against very good players.
Yesterday I played another good Hugo whose style was completely different to the last guy. He played a much more patient, lame style where he would stay away once heâd established a life lead. I tried applying a lot of the stuff from this thread, but it played out exactly the way I expected it to. Trying to kill him with whiff punishes takes forever (and is all the more difficult if heâs conservative), trades are in his favour, and trying to claw a life lead back from him is a nightmare. Charging rocks is a complete lottery unless the Hugo is an idiot who keeps jumping relentlessly, and fake rock > anti-air isnât as effective as versus other grapplers because of his jump arc/air normals.
Further up the page you said you think this MU is 7-3 or even 8-2 in Codyâs favour. Personally I donât think itâs possible for Cody to have an MU thatâs that strongly in his favour in this game - he has the tools to compete against most characters, but he just isnât designed in a way that would allow him to dominate match-ups. Think about it for a second - if this MU is 8-2 in Codyâs favour, then whatâs it going to be versus the characters who have a genuinely strong zoning game? Completely unwinnable?
When I was listing things that Hugo has over other grapplers I also forgot to mention Meat Squasher. You can be as diligent as you like, but all it takes is for him to catch you with one of these and itâs full screen corner carry. I was just watching a set on Jibboâs YouTube where he was playing the mirror, and despite him being a Hugo main and specifically talking about trying to react/jump away from Meat Squasher, he was still getting caught by it repeatedly.
Can Hugo really hurt you from half-screen though? Shouldnât the strategy be to make him come to you?
Also, I would think MP/LP Bad Stone would beat focus dashing through your normals since you could tag him as he recovers from his dash. You should also be able to block EX Lariat. Idk about Meat Squasher though. Anyway, I donât know since I canât try this stuff out yet, but just something to lab. Hope that helps.
Now this is normally how you should play against hugo. I personally wouldâve done more fake rocks but overall this is how the match up is supposed to go.
That Hugo was bad. Like REALLY bad. That matchup was played all sorts of wrong from the Hugo side.
Letâs see, not one blocked or whiff MK Ruffian was punished.
Only ONE crack kick was reacted to.
Hugo jumping in when Cody is clearly holding the stones, during that time Hugo should just walk forward. At that point Cody is committed to the badstone. Even Hugo can negate the pushback from the badstone simply by walking forward for 20F and the chip even on a fully charged badstone is low for how long it takes. 20chip is the same as Roseâs fireball does normally. With other fireball characters not only is the startup faster but the pushback is greater and the blockstun is greater. This means if you try to just walk forward and block as Hugo you wont gain any ground. Ryuâs fireball is 0.8 Codyâs is 0.5 since you canât throw a fireball while another fireball is on screen it means that one the Hadoken from Ryu hits there is only around a 13F gap before the next one is out and Hugo needs at least 35F to cover the distance lost by blocking the previous fireball. With Badstone there is at minimum a 29F period before the next fireball is out and Hugo only needs 21F to cover that distance.
Has a life lead and decides he has to go in and almost loses the round 1 and DOES lose round 3. Both times he did this Hugo could literally have just blocked badstones for the entire remaining time and still won. Round 1 50seconds left on the clock and Hugo has close to 600 health left while Cody has less than 50. Throwing a max range LP Badstone the move still isnât going to hit until ~55F, even if Cody threw only LP Badstones and Hugo walked into range of those LP Badstones every time itâd still take 50badstones to end the round. There isnât enough TIME in the round to win from that. Same thing with Round 3 though there might have enough time in round 3 to win with just badstones assuming Cody threw them LITERALLY as fast as possible and did nothing else, even then Hugo just could timer scam with an ultra startup to eat up like 3-4seconds.