Techniques: Maintaining Corner Advantage

In this section, I focus on how Abel can use the corner to his advantage and maintain his cornering position.

Spacing and Zoning
Characters in the corner have are at a disadvantage as they have less movement options; they cannot move backwards. This makes zoning, poking and pressuring an opponent much easier as you have less variables to consider in terms of range. However, rushing blindly into an opponent into the corner gives him opportunities to escape and worse, puts you into the corner instead. Always maintain a reasonable distance (the rule of thumb being just outside your standing LK range). This gives you the space to (i) react to any attempts to escape by jumping out, throwing or attacking and (ii) keeps you in range to maintain offensive pressure.

Corner Tools
Abel's has multiple tools to pressure an opponent. Step Kick is pretty obvious. Wheel Kick is a much underused tool in the corner to beat crouching opponents (the default defensive position) and to beat those that neutral jump or back jump in the corner. Mid-range Change of Direction also works well as a poke used sparingly.

Standing LK in the corner is also quite effective. It's fast and has good range which stuffs a lot of characters as they try to escape or counter-poke. It's also good for reacting against jump outs as the recovery is pretty quick, giving you time to jump backwards and HK to beat him back into the corner.

Remember that Change of Direction actually throws them out of the corner, so if you want to keep them there either FADC the Change of Direction or do it up to the 2nd hit. Tornado Throw also throws them out so I like to fake a cross-up in the corner or tick cross-up and Tornado Throw him right back into it.