I have a set of money matches coming up soon vs. a Catwoman. Any tips from the community on the match-up.
catwoman:
the recent buff to her f1 into an overhead is pretty good but not that big of a deal from a neutral game standpoint. When you're in neutral game always block high; her overhead combo starters have good range but her lows do not. everyone likes to up-play her "new 50/50" but she can only do it if she's at advantage right next to you (after a close jump in or hard knockdown for example). She does have the whip trip move, but I wouldn't really worry about it, just try to block it on reaction if you see it; if you do you can punish with lift since it's -33.
Catwoman gets straight up murdered in the neutral game by GL. She has to take huge risks by doing stuff like EX cat dash on a read (which can be blocked an punished) or jumping at you with j2 (which has a really good hitbox but ever leaving the ground against GL is taking your life into your own hands). All her normals except f1 are stubby as fuck so you have free reign to press b1 and 223 at their ranges as well.
zone her with a combination of air rockets and trait+chaingun while baiting EX catdash. Catwoman players love to throw that move around so blow them up for it. when she's a little closer switch gears to using your superior ground normals or jumping at her (she has no good AA either).
You can almost do whatever you want in the neutral game.
Things become a little more difficult when she lands a hit and knocks you down. Her f1/b1 can be a hard to block as you're getting up; they're pretty quick but the animations are drastically different so you can tell immediately which way to block. Or you can cut the bullshit and go for a wake up lift, either way.
Beyond that she has a bunch of shenanigans on wake up that I'm not too familiar with. One I know of is where she'll catdash over your body and then EX it which causes her to reverse direction and hit from the other side. This is fucking stupid because you can just neutral down guard both sides but I still see it done.
tl;dr
she can't do shit until she lands a hit
shoot her with air rockets and trait+chaingun while baiting and punishing catdash - 1/2 to full screen.
use your superior ground normals and jump at her from 1/2 screen and closer, be careful of her j2 from here though.
you must defend when up close, but she doesn't have significant advantage on anything so mashing d1 isn't a bad idea.
you must deal with her mix ups and shenanigans if you get knocked down.
