Fuudo(Fei Long)

I was able to sit down and play Fuudo to a first to three. I was comfortable with the match-up to begin with since I had played against Mago back at ReveLAtions.

The matched started with him testing me. He did a focus to bait one of my fireballs. Immediate when I saw his focus I buffered low forward into dragon punch. He said, "Good!" As the sets went on, I never saw him focus like that ever again. The next thing I caught on to was one of his ticks. He would always rekka then do a chicken wing. I dragon punched after his rekka to beat his chicken wing and, once more, he never did it again. His sense of offense and defense with the combination of timing were perpetually great. As soon as I got into the corner, his pressure and block strings were completely safe. He never threw out anything for me to even remotely move out of the corner without getting hurt. It was either fireball or walk out of the corner to low forward him. Nothing else. I couldn't move out of the corner. So what did I do? I used low forward fireball to push myself out of the corner. This is one thing I notice other Ryu players do besides John Choi and Daigo. They don't use low forward to the best of it's ability. In Arcade Edition, low forward was nerfed, but that shouldn't change the way you use it completely. Yes, you must be much smarter with it and you have to work harder, but some players seem to be handicapped by it. For one, you will get hit, trade, or even get counter-hit out of your low forward by anything and everything at times. However, that shouldn't stop you from using, essentially, one of Ryu's best pokes. You will get hit. Get over it. If you keep trying to use low forward and make small adjustments as the match progresses you will see results indefinitely within your game-play. In the case where you get punished using low forward; get back up, analyze why you got hit and make that adjustment. With that adjustment alone, you've already improved your knowledge in using low forward correctly. Building your confidence in using your low forward is most important, but how can you build that confidence if you're too scared to use low forward?

The games ended up being somewhat close and I was able to block any mix-ups Fuudo attempted on me. I had seen most of them from playing against Mago. However, his footsies, spacing and reactions were far superior to mine. I ended up losing to Fuudo 0-3 and won only one round. Fighting Mago was very hard, but fighting Fuudo was like fighting a super Mago.

-Miky

P.S. Soon after I met with Air(Kenny) and I told him that I had won a round against Fuudo. During his trip in Japan(post-Evolution 2011), he explained to me that he could not take a round off of Fuudo.