Capcom recently released the December 2024 patch for Street Fighter 6. Though it was advertised to just be a minor update, every single character received some changes.
It’s still early, but it feels like Ryu ended up being one of the big winners of the update with the buffs that he received. Two-time Capcom Cup champion Falcon|MenaRD has apparently taken a sudden interest in Ryu and has recently been practicing with him online.
In a series of videos uploaded by The FGC Place, MenaRD can be seen taking on other pro players Chris Tatarian and Bandits|Caba, who are playing Ken and Guile respectively.
Ryu’s fireball game has been improved with the latest patch in that he can now safely cancel into his projectile from a blocked crouching medium kick without having to fear any sort of reprisal from a Drive Impact. However, Ken did not benefit from this change, which results in MenaRD reminding Tatarian that he can still Drive Impact to interrupt this string.
As Caba tends to be MenaRD’s training partner, you can tell both players are fairly familiar with how the other plays. This results in MenaRD playing very methodically in this match up.
It’s likely that MenaRD is simply experimenting with Ryu’s changes to get a better feel for the character after the patch. This certainly seems like a smart approach considering that Kusanagi qualified for Capcom Cup with Ryu. Of course, there’s also that possibility that MenaRD could be planning to pull out Ryu himself during the big event.
Check out the match footage of MenaRD’s Ryu in the videos below: