I first started thinking about this a while back when I was labbing a way to hit both Dhalsim’s backdash and teleport on wakeup. I ended up coming up with some complicated hado motion to db option select that was way hard to do in match.

I ended up bemoaning the fact that Ryu’s stand LP whiffs on crouching opponents, unlike say Yun’s standing LP, which he can easily option select (cLK, stand LP+MP) as a meaty to get big damage on hit confirm or backdash. Ryu’s stand jab simply whiffs if they’re crouching, and you can get hit/thrown. I can always do an option select with stand LK which hits crouching opponents, but the problem then is that you cannot combo from stand LK to get a full combo.

I was thinking of ways to get Rolento (whose escape options work on my usual cLK+LP, cLP+cHK meaty because my sweep comes out too fast and whiffs), Ibuki (similarly, my sweep whiffs under her jumpy backdash), or dudes like Rolento, Vega etc with invincible backflips and how if I could option select a stand normal like far standing roundhouse or forward fierce, that would solve all my problems.

Then I watched this video by Momochi, which my good buddy Daichi helped translate:

And how he would input standing normal option selects while doing crouching lights! By inputting cLK (release stick to neutral and hit stand normal) then quickly chain to cLP.

I tested it with Ryu (while watching Capcom Cup when Ryu wasn’t on screen) and it works a treat.

Now I have cLK+LP (release stick to neutral and hit HP) cLP which gets me my full low hitting two-hit hit confirm, whilst smacking Rolento with far stand HP if he backdashes or rolls or flips for 120 juicy damage.

And I can do cLP+cLP (HK) cLP and the far standing roundhouse comes out to smack Ibuki’s backdash (yesss finally another way to control this bloody matchup) and I can use it against other long backdashes like Chun Li as well.

But the most juicy thing I found…is you can option select forward fierce on the following characters!

Ryu, Ken, Honda, Oni, Sagat, Dee Jay, rolento (does one hit to the flip), evil ryu, blanka, Rufus, Hugo (air reset so no point)

So in the mirror match if you try to backdash on me…you’re gonna get hit by minimum 260~300 plus damage muahahaha. Plus forward fierce is braindead to hit confirm, compared to stuff like cmk or stand MP meaty option selects.

This plus the new close standing roundhouse stuff to lab in Ultra 1.04…the learning never stops!

Edit: Hilariously I also learned that day that the best whiff punish of Adon stand HK is my own stand HK. I never thought to press that button, always using sweep and stand MP instead. While stand HK is much slower than sweep, the leniency of it’s range when whiff punishing Adon’s stand HK makes it so much easier. Doh.