I'm starting to see Kabal as more of a 4-6 MU than a 3-7 MU now. Do you guys agree with Pig that Cage-Kenshi could be 2-8? Personally, I'm leaning more towards 3-7. If Cage's spacing is on point, he can whiff punish SC and RK (not sure if teleflurry can be whiff punished, I'm guessing it can't be). Forcing Kenshi to use meter and getting him to the corner works in Cage's favor. Kenshi without meter is in trouble, and has to rely on d1, d3, or SC to get out of pressure. Shadow kicks to punish blocked SCs to get Kenshi near the corner can also help in this MU. EX nut punch can also help when approaching Kenshi to go through anything he may throw out. I think this MU is more of a 3-7 with good whiff punishing, meter usage, forcing Kenshi to use meter, and getting them to the corner.
If you are sitting theretrying to whiff punish sc or rk then you get ex sc and he has more space. If you sit there trying to block sc in a range you can do something about it (You can only shadow kick punish it at point blank and even then it is really hard)then he gets to dash up and do a 50 50 for free, both giving him good damage and space, plus both are safe. Upclose, once he has a bar, he can ex sc and ou have to jump over it. If you block it he is at adv, you gt hit your full screen. If you jump you can be aa on reaction and sent full screen. I think this is def a 2 8 at the highest possible level. The fact that an idea your throwing out is dash up exnutpunch shows how desperate of a matchup it truly is. I used to agree with you on kabal, but you truly have to play a wide variety of kabals to understand how bad it really is. Obviously he outzones you, which although it doesnt do any damage, it controls the whole pace of the matchup plus he gets meter. When he has you dash crouchblocking his iagb, then he gets a free ndc into pressure, and his pressure is equal to johnny cages in this matchup, since he has the option to ndc for adv, let the dash go for a full combo, or his 50 50. The only easy punish out of those is the full dash, although you can also punish the 50 50 if you are looking for it. So then you try to beat the nomad dash into pressure, by using dash d3, however now he can ground saw you for damage and space, and even if you block it, it is no big deal. When you finally get into a range where you can play footsies with him, he has really good tools like ndc, groundsaw, f32, fwd4, flashparry, and even his overhead to keep you out or get him in. Then once you truly get in, he will have meter, so you have to be wary of ex nomad dash, the flash parry(Although you can beat this with fwd33b3), plus his down pokes. Even if you hit kabal you often times cannot take fulll damage, because you have to keep him grounded if he will get a breaker in the combo, because if he breaks airborne, he can nomad dash into open space for free. Hard, but still winnable 3 7
