How did you do at WCW?
He got beaten up by the nWo constantly.
I still have respect for you, dude. You work tirelessly for the community, and you helped me get out of my slump with your guide on option select. Your knowledge is good, and that’s the thing you have over a lot of Giefs, so I’m sure I speak for us all when I say thank you. If you ever need help though, feel free to ask me. I’m doing my best to get better as well to represent Norcal’s best. Now if only I had the money to go to more tournaments. Being a poor college student sucks.
I guess Ultra David meant you when he said the “other guy’s question”.
**If you don’t want to read this huge ass post, just go to the bottom where I bolded shit out. **
I still think the matchup is in Blanka’s favor–maybe not 6-4 anymore, but 5.5-4.5 in Blanka’s favor still. His normal mix up makes it REALLY hard to get in on Blanka, and as Ultra David already knows, if a Blanka can keep a solid spacing the entire game, you won’t really have many chances to capitalize on newfound knowledge. I play against Hiro at SVGL and local tournaments, so I think I have a feel for what a good Blanka does and doesn’t do.
So, from what I know, this is what Blanka does to keep Gief out:
His forward fierce is a good poke because of its range. It’s used as a good keep away tool but it loses to lariat. So Blanka’s will stop this if you are lariat happy.
Instead, he will now use either Blanka’s slide (duh) or back fierce. Back fierce is when Blanka’ slaps the ground. This move here BEATS whiffed lariats (at certain ranges) and IT EVEN LOWERS BLANKA’S HIT BOX. I fucking hate this move. This move essentially neutralizes Gief’s lovely standing medium punch, and if you don’t know the power of standing medium punch yet, I suggest you abuse the shit out of it now… well, not in this matchup, but others will be fine. To counter back fierce, you have only one really good option, and this is MOSTLY on REACTION to a whiff.
Standing lk buffered to ex greenhand. If you guys can’t do this yet, I seriously suggest you practice it. The way I do it is: forward lk, qcf mp+hp. Do the qcf fast enough during the lk, and greenhand won’t come out UNLESS lk HITS something. This beats Ryus who whiff cr. mk a lot and are lovely green creature, Blanka, here.
If you can get Blanka off his back fierce, THEN you can apply pressure with standing medium punch. Standing medium kick sucks monkey balls in this matchup. Like Ultra David has said time and time again, this move is just too freaking bad on hit and block. And it’s slow as hell, too.
Next thing Blanka can do against you is shut down your air game. Upball is obvious. You have to LOOK for when a Blanka has down charge, so don’t jump then, move in. If Blanka doesn’t have charge, he will use a WELL-TIMED cr. medium punch. I call this move the back scratcher. Blanka’s cr. medium punch will beat ALL OF ZANGIEF’S AIR ATTACKS. Yes, I’ve tested this out. It will beat knees, splash, jumping fierce, etc. But this is where the intersting thing comes in, for every move that Gief does against back scratcher, the Blanka has to VARY his timing. Meaning, if you change your lovely splash to knees, you can hit Blanka because the timing is different. What Crizzle does against Hiro (those two are buddies and they practice a lot) is mix it up between knees and forward fierce. I haven’t really tried forward fierce yet against Hiro, so dunno lol.
Jump neutral fierce also shuts down Gief’s air game. I’m not honestly sure what beats this at the space Hiro uses it (about 1.5 giefs apart).
Okay, enough bad news. This is what you NEED to do to beat a good Blanka.
First, practice on reaction. Whenever you see a Blanka ball, practice on reacting to it. I don’t mean guessing your lariats against Blanka ball, I mean, freaking reacting to it. You can’t react if it’s up close to you, so go ahead and just block it. It’s fine. Don’t be deterred.
Next, once you knock down a Blanka, do what Ultra David has put in his guide. Cr. lk pressure on his wakeup ALL DAY. If he up balls you, then you KARA GREENHAND him (either do qcf x2 PP or hold forward for a bit then do the actual motion + PP). If he does nothing but block, then mix it up with a tick throw, jumping fierce (if he jumps a lot after… say… two cr.lk’s), or finish the cr.lk to stop his jump frames to ex greenhand. Plink cr.lk x3. Just do it. Don’t be a man about it and use only one finger to do cr.lk. It’s a hard link, so plink it like Itabashi. If Blanka does electricity, it won’t work because it has startup frames that get stuffed out by cr.lk.
The only real options Blanka has on his wakeup against Gief are block, upball, and ultra (and I guess back dash, but I don’t see Blanka’s doing this for some reason. I’ll need to ask Hiro). ONCE BLANKA GETS HIS ULTRA, LAY THE FUCK OFF. It’s a lot of work for Gief to Blanka down, so don’t screw it up for yourself by getting hit by his ultra. If you succesfully bait out his ultra, then light greenhand reversal -> ultra him after you block the ball. It’s easy to do. Practice this if you haven’t yet.
Okay, now let’s say you’ve worked really damn hard and Blanka is now in the corner. Blanka will try to get out of the corner using ex rainbow ball (you know, the one where he jumps up in an arc). To stop this, neutral jump fierce headbutt (not medium headbutt. That thing hits on the WAY UP, not down). Once you get Blanka pressured in the corner, don’t let him go. You will take more damage by letting him escape, so understand that the corner game is incredibly important in this matchup. Weave in and out using st. mp and threated with lp spd. If you’ve practiced buffering a forward lp spd with st. mp, you can apply it very well here. Any ball that Blanka does (if you block it) when he’s close to the corner can be punished by ex greenhand. You don’t even need to kara it for obvious reasons.
**
Okay, so here’s the dumbed down tl;dr version:
- Plink cr.lk and do it on Blanka’s wakeup whenever you knock him down EXCEPT when he has ultra.
- Kara Greenhand Blanka if he does upball on your wakeup.
- Learn to react to horizontal blanka ball with lariat.
- Learn to st. lk buffer to ex greenhand to beat Back fierce.
- switch it up between jumping knees and forward fierce to screw up with Blanka’s cr. medium punch.
- lol I dunno what to do against Blanka’s neutral jump fierce. Maybe an early jumping forward fierce.
- Learn to light greenhand 720 after blocking Blanka’s ultra.
- Keep Blanka in the corner and stop his escape attempts with neutral jump fierce headbutt.
- Thank Ultra David for giving us so much info.
**
Are you suggesting eating an upball on their wake up and kara GH after? I’m pretty sure cr.lk on his wake up is not safe and you will get tagged by ex upball (4 frame invincible start up). I try to bait the upball some times and get him with EXGH afterward. You don’t have to kara the GH to hit him if it’s an upball. Regular one will hit. You might have to block high though.
Yeah, that pretty much is what I’m suggesting. You have more life than Blanka so you can take the hit, and I’m pretty sure greenhand does more damage that upball AND it pushes Blanka to the corner. Of course, this is situational. If you have less life than Blanka, you should be wary of doing this. And, to be honest, I actually prefer just faking the cr.lk and blocking myself, but the opponent has to be scared first, so that’s why cr. lking a lot is pretty important.
You should be doing cr. jab/short o-s down-toward sweep on Blanka’s wakeup. Your best option is to cross him up before he gets up first so he can’t do ultra (which is more feasible v Blanka than anyone else because Blanka gets up so late) and then do cr. jab/short o-s dt sweep. Jab/short beats horizontal ball, and he can’t do horizontal ball without charge; up ball beats jab/short, but it’s punishable for 16% of Blanka’s life with kara hand as opposed to the 10% life it takes from Gief and it leaves Blanka closer to the corner than he was before; jabs/shorts beat Blank’s back hop and focus dash; and the sweep beats Blanka’s backdash. You don’t need kara hand to punish a close blocked up ball, but you do need it to punish an up ball on crouching hit from slightly farther than point blank range. If you can get a crossover before he gets up, then Blanka is totally screwed on wakeup. If not, then be wary of ultra like Coopa said. That ultra makes even Zangief hurt.
Hiro is the one who knocked me out of WCW, actually. It was fun because we used to play 3S together back in Berkeley and I hadn’t played with him for probably like 4-5 years. He’s a cool guy, real smart. But it was also frustrating for me because I forgot all sorts of footsie and jump in ranges and the timings for all sorts of things. He woke up with a throw once because he saw I was mistiming my meaties; he punished my whiffed footsie attempts; he antiaired me for free; I missed ex hand to punish his wakeup up ball once or twice; I didn’t get kara hand to punish his horizontal ball even once; and when he went to chip kill me with ultra at the end of the last round, I knew that I could block the low hit and then ex hand before the high hit to escape all that chip, but I forgot the timing and ended up just getting hit by the ultra instead.
Then I remembered that I used to think Dhalsim countered Blanka, but after picking Sim I realized that I actually had totally forgotten everything about that matchup.
Oh well. Don’t be hard on yourself if you haven’t played in a while. Besides, the big book of Zangief option selects and best meaties is hard to keep in your head in the heat of battle.
Ok, since Zangief threads don’t have a Q & A I’m gonna ask my stupid questions here. Is it just me or does zangief say “kool-aid!” when he does his atomic suplex command grab? Also, doesn’t he look exactly like Mr.T? I sense some japanese rascism.
hi
i ve got a question… does ryu can hit me in the air while im at the begging/middle of a PPP lariat? or is just my imagination?.. this guy kept doing jump ins while i was in lariat and he beat me, it was like wtf man u gotta do hadokens not that XD
hold crouch when you lariat, it gives you a hit box gap and if you time it right their jump-in falls in that gap and you beat them out. If it trades you can EXGH them in the air.
Other anti-air options include cr.mp and headbutt, headbutt is my favorite 
I too am also completley addicted to Headbutt.
if you catch people on the ground with headbutt, theres a solid bnb combo you can go into to bring the stun damage close to 800. Get a stun -> Ultra. Very easy way to clinch a match that your opponent has been dominating
Yea, I usually do something along the lines of cr.lk or lp, st.mp xx EX Ghand.
Hai Giefs,
How do you feel against Fei-Long ?
Frayyyyyyyyyyy
What’s up guys?
I’m back from a verrrrry long vacation.
Let me know what information needs to be updated in the first post. I’m too lazy to go through 20+ pages 
Thanks fellow SRK’ers.
I just pretend I’m Chuck Norris or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and I usually win.
,
Fei Long can be tricky, but he’s like Cammy. Just wait for him to do something dumb(point blank chicken wing) then punish.
i always had hard time with chun. so what i gathered so far is…
if u get ex gh thru, mostly for her fireball to knock her down, u can win.
when u miss fire exgh, and can’t knock her down, u lose.
play patient, push her in corner, keep her in corner.
always keep one gauge charged for exgh
chun’s s.rh
if u r crouching, it wont hit.
c.lk lose at opening distance to s.rh, need to be bit closer to beat with it.
chun’s c.rh
c.lp beats from mid distance.
her c.rh beats s.mp but s.mp beats all her punch pokes.
chun’s fireball is not as bad to react and exgh, and got to get this to win.
walking back to bait her to walk forward on charge characters works time to time.
once u see charged characters walk forward, they have 0 charge.
chun’s runaway j.rh from really close on wakeup, if you block, you can exgh.
or exgh on reversal and ultra on landing… but if she don’t j.rh…
playing against bison and chun really needs patience.
and both of them got strong ground attacks.
There are two types of Fei longs…good ones and bad ones. Bad ones its just a matter of bait/punish/reversal SPDs/empty jumps. Good ones its get smacked around/crossed up/get baited/lose heh. It seems its all about spacing and well TIMED block strings.
- :bluu:
I’m having some trouble with rush down Sakuras. I think a lot comes from inexperience with the match up. There aren’t that many Sak players and the ones that do use her a generally pretty smart. I learned yesterday that if she does her charged EX hado and you EXGH through it, if you hit her, you can still get hit by the hado. So if you have no health, it’s something to take into consideration. Her neutral jump HK is really annoying too. I don’t think cr.mp can beat it if she’s right next to you. It stuffs lariat too it seems so she basically has free wake up pressure. That mixed with cr.lk into combo or throw really makes it tough to get out of. I think I’ve tried to headbutt her when she tries wake up neutral j.HK and the headbutt might whiff. I’m not positive. Any thoughts or suggestions?