He may be Street Fighter’s poster boy, but Ryu has not been all that strong of a character in competitive play for quite some time now, perhaps since the early days of Street Fighter 5 in 2016. Such a context made it all the more impressive when French Ryu user Kusanagi (not to be confused with other competitors of the same moniker) took home the gold at Ultimate Fighting Arena 2024.
Does this mean Ryu is suddenly a top tier? Of course not, but it does beg the community to consider more precisely how much a force to be reckoned with Ryu actually is. To help out with this, long time Ryu main MDZ Jimmy has constructed a Street Fighter 6 match up chart wherein he opines about Ryu’s abilities against every other current character in the game.
Let’s get this out of the way right out of the gate: Jimmy does not feel like Ryu has much advantage. He places the character in only two favorable match ups, (E. Honda and Blanka) and he feels even then Ryu only has a slight edge.
The (previously) shoe-less wanderer does boast eight even match ups, according to Jimmy, one of which is against one the most popular higher tier characters in the game: Ken. Jimmy also thinks Ryu goes even with Cammy, yet another higher tier fighter.
Then we get into the bad match ups. Three characters absolutely destroy him, four give him a really hard time, and the other five have a small but noticeable advantage.
If you’d like to see the finished chart you can do so immediately by simply clicking the thumbnail here. If, however, you’d like to hear all of Jimmy’s reasonings behind each of his placements, you’ll want to watch the full video that’s embedded further down for your convenience.
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