You can follow it up with splash, cr. MK xx Siberian Bear Grab, or splash, cr. MK, HP SPD to make it a zero to death combo, rather than a touch of death.
I’m not trying to be snide or anything, but I’ll say it again…
I realize that, in most cases, Zangief has combos that can end the match if you land that dizzy combo on someone, but, again, it doesn’t fit the definition of Touch of Death.
Plenty of combos that will get the job done are listed in my FAQ, so feel free to try them all. 
I’d be honored if one day someone made a video to go with my FAQ.
Just to be clear Zangief’s only rapid cancelable moves are close/far/cr. jab and they only rapid cancel into each other. His far lk is also not special cancelable while cr. lk is. Also I don’t think you need to cancel cr. mk to tick into super.
My bad on the ToD thing though. I always thought it meant a combo that leads to a zero to death.
I know there isn’t much activity here so I thought maybe we could talk about shenanigans to get things rolling. I’d like to hear some of your favorite tick throw setups too.
I recently saw this video that shows if you bite some characters in the corner you can cross them up by walking/GH under them. For some strange reason, certain charcters can only be crossed up like that on the corner closest to your picture (2p Zangief right corner, 1p zangief left corner).
Another shenanigan I’ve picked up is close lp anti air xx GH to ambiguously cross up their landing. I haven’t played around with that trick too much but I know it works on Blanka. It works so well sometimes I cr. hk the wrong way lol. Lariats don’t have that problem of course.
Did anyone find any use for corpse hopping? The only thing I noticed from trying it out was that Dhalsim is super hard to do it on for some reason. I imagine it would be useful on certain charge characters but I never used it in a real match.
When I played rcaido online (Gief mirror), he really got me with neutral jump to SPD when he knocked me down. It was surprisingly effective when I tried it on other people. Somewhat related to that is I sometimes do repeated RBG’s in Gief mirrors (lol sometimes vs. anyone i feel is in “panic crouching block mode” waiting to reverse ticks).
One of my favorite tick throw setups is to knock the opponent down and after he is used to the 1,2,3 jabs into SPD I’ll throw out a meaty cl. d+Fierce into SPD. The hit stun is pretty long and 95% of the time doesn’t get reversed (after the hit stun). Especially if you only do it once or twice during the entire match :-).
This will be defeated if they reverse on wakeup, though.
This is also why you don’t want to tick attempt every single wake-up and also bait wake up reversals into SPD. Keep them guessing whats next ;-).
I played around a bit with it in training mode and it really does last forever. I thought it would be inferioir to meaty GH tick (lol my favorite and the first tick setup I learned) but the block/hitstun lasts a lot longer than I would have guessed. I’ll have to add that to my bag of tricks.
I looked into who the crossup bite and corpse hop works on. Here are my results.
Corpse hop (using hop next to a downed opponent to switch sides)
Really Easy- Bison, Cammy, Chun, Vega
Easyish- Balrog, Fei, Honda, Sagat, Zangief.
Tricky/Weird- Guile, Hawk
Hard- Ken, Ryu
Super Hard- Sim (possible but only with a really lucky knockdown)
Impossible- Blanka, DJ
Crossup bite in corner- Cammy/Chun (not too close), Honda (really close only), Ken/Ryu (any range in near corner and not too close in far corner), Sim (very specific range/2 quick cr. jabs from point blank), Vega (anywhere next to the corner)
There are a few people like Balrog that you can GH to crossup in the corner, but that would be kind of silly to do since they recover before you.
My favorite thing to do now on people with almost no health (but enough health to survive GH chip) on knockdown is to walk up in their face an kick lariat. It either kills them outright since it does more damage than GH, hits them a few times since they stand up (desperately attempting to reversal shoryuken or w/e) which also kills them, or trades with their shoryuken :^). Just be careful of reversal throws or messing up the timing for the lariat.
I thought the corpse hop works great against Blanka…Especially for those people who like to do the dash backwards…Setup beautifully for an SPD.
Anyone have any advice on the Honda matchup. I recently got knocked out of a tourney twice be the same honda player. All I felt I could do was cr. jab and psychic cr. roundhouse.
What was Honda doing? Hundred slap? Sumo splash? down back?
Honda is easily your worst matchup, unfortunately for you (but fortunately for me and the other Honda mains!).
Best start to the round is to step back. Honda’s is jab Hundred Hand Slap, since if you start with an immediate cr. jab you have no choice but to block thanks to the freaky frames.
Zangief’s best attack in this match is crouching jab. Crouching jab beats headbutt and the tip of hundred hands. If you’re not careful with it, though, Honda can far sweep your cr. jabs pretty easily, so use those more as feints than anything else, or from fullscreen.
Your #1 goal in this match is not to get hit unless you’re absolutely sure you’re getting a knockdown in exchange. Unless Honda is knocked down, jumping at him is a bad idea, standing jab and headbutt beat all of your jumps. If Honda gets lifelead, it is very very difficult for Zangief to get it back. Honda’s standing jab and jab headbutt combined stuff a good amount of your approaches, so if Honda gets lifelead and doesn’t mess up you’re pretty boned.
Once you get to about 3/4 screen, you can start playing the baiting game (this is unfortunately Gief’s best option!). First bit of lariat beats headbutts, supers, and buttslams, so make sure to have that ready in case Honda decides to go for random chip. If Honda stops short with headbutt, SPD! If Honda stops inside your SPD range, SPD SPD SPD.
If you get a knockdown, great! Crossup splash the KD’d honda and (if he missed his reversal) do some number of cr. jabs and SPD. Make it a guessing game; do a different amount of cr. jabs each time so it’s hard for Honda to guess when to reverse. If Honda has meter, mix up jump ins after knockdown with walk-in-walk-out to bait out his super and lariat the second hit.
Honda’s reversals on knockdown:
Super (if you jump in, the motion is crossup-friendly and you will be eating 55% of your bar. Not good for you! If you block, lariat the second hit)
Headbutt (Basically you should try to trade with this somehow, back of splash can trade sometimes)
Buttslam (Lariat when he’s on the way down)
Ochio (If you’re grounded and in his throw range you sort of deserve to eat one of these, your throw range is larger by a decent amount)
Also, running-bear grab can be surprisingly good against down-back Honda if you can disguise it effectively, it comes out super fast and is hard to react to. Careful not to abuse it or you will be swept and/or otherwise smacked.
Once you get lifelead, you can either turtle at fullscreen with lariats or continue the SPD mixup game, choice is yours.
Unfortunately, even with all of this Honda still wins about 75% of the time. You do have options, so make sure you use them!
I see what you did there.
Some good tips MadKing. The last time Honda players gave Zangief players tips, they said to try SPD’ing an airborne Torpedo. So thanks. IDK about that tho, I would say Lariat on the way up. In my experience, Lariat on the way down doesn’t work. But my timing could be crappy.
Any other Zangiefs have luck with Lariat beating Sumo Splash on the way down? And I mean when it’s right on top, not when it’s a little to the side.
Nah the Sumo Splash is annoying for me, i cant seem to get the right timing down most of the time, even though i know its coming. You either get hit, take block damage, trade, or 25% you win cleanly…
As for the rapid jabs, i think that’s bullshit too…I dont understand why Honda beats out jabs…Seriously, its like a good gamble for Honda’s to consistently use the headbutt/hhs cuz the jab would sometimes lose to it. High risk, high reward…
You guys should block Sumo Smashes and SPD out of blockstun. Every time. Can’t believe I’m giving you guys hints :sad:
Honda can do an immediate reversal w/ another summo splash :sad::wasted::annoy::tdown::bluu::crybaby::xeye::lame::chainsaw::looney::wasted:
It depends on where the Sumo Smash hits I guess. There is quite a bit of recovery on smashes in most instances.
No, they can do the loop over & over & over & over until
a) knocks you down
b) trade hits
c) you knock honda down w/standing jab or lariat
Believe me i’ve tried this against the offensive Honda’s like Ego & SuperNYC…
A kick-lariat at the very last instant and from a crouching position should work. The timing is tight but it should work. This is for when he’s right on top of you. If he’s a little to the side, like you say, that’s when it’s tough. You can get the lariat to trade that way sometimes but I wouldn’t depend on it.
On the start of the round if you anticipate a HHS, you can s.Fierce or c.Fierce to trade with it pretty evenly I believe.
Huh, I’ve seen sumo smashes been grabbed after a block numerous times (ether myself being SPD’d or other honda players).
The hop can’t go over Blanka when he is knocked down. You can hop over him if he is ducking (DJ too) but that is punishable (and technically not corpse hopping since he is no longer knocked down while you hop over him) since you still haven’t landed yet. I wasn’t really sure what the conventional definition of corpse hopping was so I put what I meant by corpse hopping in parenthesis.
As for the Honda buttslams, ducking lariat beats it 100% of the time if you time it right (still pretty tricky though). Good Hondas can also loop buttslams without ever having to worry about reversal SPD’s since he recovers before you do. I’ve done reversal SPD’s many times vs non-meaty buttslams and they just don’t work. The only time reversal SPD works is if they mess up or try to throw you.