F4~Overhead elbow can be blown up too. If you want to be safe with your punish attempt, just uppercut, but you can actually punish it with standing 2 into ex hat for a 42% combo (timing is pretty strict though). Which means that as you said, Jax would have to spend meter to do F4 into ex overhead smash. And if that's the only way to pressure, then he's fucked. The thing about the KL-Jax match-up is you can literally blow up every single one of his post F4 options unless he spends meter. You can just mash uppercut after F4 (if you're not confident in 21 spinning F413 or punishing F4~OHS, although the former is quite easy) and you'll beat anything he does including F4~square wave (or whatever his fireball is called) and even a raw F4 since it's punishable on block.
Moreover, Kung Lao's straight hat avoids ground pounds because he has one foot off the ground (it's a weird property. It works for Liu Kang's high fireball too and there might be others), and Kung Lao can blow up all of Jax's ground pound cancel set-ups on knockdown by doing wake-up ex~spin.
F3 avoids all of Jax's wake-ups, including his armored ones, and if timed right can actually be cancelled into spin (you have to reverse the input since you emerge on the other side) and blow up his wake-ups completely. 21 spin is also one of the most reliable punishers for Jax's dash punch in the whole game.
Kung Lao can just zone, D4, F2, 24 overhead, and blow up whatever Jax does in this match-up. Whoever thinks Kung Lao loses is probably teleporting like a mad man and getting blown up.
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Nuke Which character do you play and what's your experience in this match-up?
