definitely not trolling, you have many options against her lunge, thats the only way shes starting something against the joker because she has no neutral
You're forgetting joker has no neutral either. Every option joker has vs lunge he has to commit to and lunge is not the only way she can get anything started vs joker lol the MU isn't just about her lunge.
Up close she absolutely destroys joker both in damage and on knockdown. More then half of jokers moveset whiffs on cheetah making it very hard to start an offense up close period, outside of making a read.
I'll give you a few examples:
You read her going for a d1 and neutral j2 to either whiff punish or get her to block, the j2 whiffs her and she whiff punishes you which leads to dumb damage or pressure. Jokers standing 2 whiffs on cheetah half the time and has no range so she can d1 challenge if they know this.
She has ways to open joker up in neutral and blow him up on wake up (yes jokers new wake up can be low profiled by her d3) or just stuffed by her mb f3 for dumb damage or even just neutral jump him so joker needs to respect her when he's knocked down.
While cheetahs on knockdown, joker has to respect her wake up (primal rage is it?), due to it being a fast multi hit wake up that eats jokers mb f/b3 and can be difficult to stuff depending on if she delays her wake up and he can parry her wake up but if she sees that coming there's a blow up lmao so again he has to make a read.
Cheetahs mix of short and long range lunges can actually be used to her advantage because jokers options to stop her for lunging require him to commit to it, meaning she can get him to whiff the option and she can go in for a whiff punish or start to apply pressure.
Here's some examples:
Jokers high canister is useful if she's max screen away and hasn't lunged yet and is just getting in the stance. If she's already lunged he's getting stuffed. If she sees high canister coming(which isn't hard because it's slow af), she can just dash forward and block it if it hits her and joker will have to mb it because it's negative af.
Jokers d2 has range but can get stuffed by her dive bomb or even her jump attacks due to the fact that it's not super fast and I believe is only active for 4 frames with 27 frames recovery. That's a tight window to challenge a relatively fast move.
Jokers j1 can stop her unless she does a j1 or 3 preemptively, then they will trade in her favor because she will be close to him.
Gunshot can check her forward advancement for 1 or 2 of her dash ins and then joker will have to play in neutral with d2 which is stupid unsafe so if he gets her to block d2 he will have to cancel it into either deathspin(-7 on block), crowbar (-9 on block), rolling can(idk why any joker would do this, she can neutral jump it on reaction and f*** him up), or gun dash cancel away (which his dash isn't the greatest and he doesn't want to get cornered by cheetah. All of these options essentially give up his turn.
And finally if she gets one combo and I mean ONE COMBO, all she has to do is run away and wait for him to come to her by playing a reactionary game and with jokers absolute lack of damage, neutral and overall way of opening someone up, this becomes an uphill battle for joker.
I mean I'm not saying this is unwinnable. This is a standard 6-4. Joker has a chance for sure if hes paying attention and making conscious reads and good choices, but overall, most situations are in her favor.
I do not see how this MU is 5-5 but hey we all have our own opinion lol