Nerf Air Tatsus

In an effort to imrpove my Street Fighter game, I'll be doing match analyses in a segment I'd like to call Nerf Air Tatsus. In the first installment, I'd like to commentate on a match played by one of my personal favorites, Uryo playing our heroine, Sakura, versus an online buff Markun playing Rufus.

So I'll spoil it for you guys now, but Uryo loses which isn't really all too important. The thing we want to do is figure out what he did right and what he did wrong in the Sakura/Rufus matchup.






Uryo plays the first round really well. As in most X vs. Rufus matchups, the key in the first round is to out footsie your opponent and score a knockdown as soon as possible to prevent Rufus from building meter. Once Rufus has meter, the dynamic of the matchup changes drastically, and X is forced to play it safe in hopes of baiting out EX-Jesus Kick.

So after some sloppy zoning on Markun's part, Uryo scores a counter-hit cr.lk leading to a knockdown BEFORE Markun was able to build any meter. This is the pivotal point of round 1. At this point, Uryo has a massive advantage and is able to ramp up the offensive pressure with impunity. He opens at 0:38 with a jump hp into a really cool baiting tactic. Uryo walks forward through Rufus's block stun as if he's going for a throw attempt, but instead, punishes Markun's OS tech with an lk Tatsu. This is a pretty nifty tactic for multiple reasons: 1) It jumps over any lk OS tech scoring a counter hit, 2) it does chip damage even if the opponent continued to block, and 3) it's neutral frame advantage on block so Uryo can continue to keep up the pressure.

He goes for this trick again after he's pushed Markun into the corner, but it's blocked and his throw attempt is stuffed by EX-Messiah. Anyway, the round plays itself out after this point and nothing interesting really happens.

Now the second round is where we start to see mistakes in Uryo's play. First is the wake up fierce at 1:17. There's just no reason to be throwing this out there. It easily could've been punished and potentially been counter-hit fodder. Rufus was already in the air at this point and it just wasn't gonna hit anything. The next semi-interesting mistake deals is just a knowledge thing and maintaining composure to apply that knowledge. At 1:30, Uryo is able to bait out EX-Messiah and he knew what he was baiting out, but he didn't know how to punish it. He tries for a sweep, but the only punish in that situation is Shouken. It must've just slipped his mind. The last thing is also a knowledge thing. Against Rufus (and Cammy), Sakura is able to OS tech with fierce to stuff dive kick/throw mixups.

In the last round, Uryo just loses composure after some compounded mistakes leading to a loss. Nothing too interesting to say about the last round.