Me vs Rico Suave

Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean “it keeps them honest”?

No. The GT I went up against was “Get Rico Suave”. This is more than likely a poser

Good question. This is pretty common jargon for forcing them to be prepared for a random unsafe move like dragon kick at any time. If they know you won’t do it, then they can play as if the move didn’t exist and do things (like walk forward without worrying about blocking) that are punishable by your unsafe moves. So, in the jargon he is “cheating” or “not respecting” your potential dragon kick if he does stuff that would leave him vulnerable to a random dragon kick and “playing honest” if he is defending against it.

You want him to keep him honest because it limits his options. For this same reason it is sometimes good to try a counter breaker early in a match. Yes it’s risky and punishable but it keeps your opponent from thinking he can break your combos any time he wants.

It’s about lowering his ability to predict what you might do from moment to moment.

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So, no more unsafe Flying Kicks from far. Know what I want to do before I do it and slow down so I don’t get killed. Right?

Pretty much. Like @BigBadAndy said too though, sometime you need to just put it out there that you will do the crazy stuff sometimes, but you can’t rely on crazy. You have to find a happy balance that fits you.

Another thing you should to is watch a few YT videos of people using the characters you use, and even the characters you want to do better against. Personally I’m not a big lab (practice mode) guy, but I like watching matches, and in doing so I’ve learned a lot about punishing certain moves.

If you like Kim Wu, watch these:

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A good example of “doing the crazy stuff” sometimes is a wake-up DP. If you’ve got a reversal definitely use it… sometimes. More than just hitting them, this will stunt their wake-up options. They aren’t going to put out a meaty or go for a grab if they think you’re going to wake-up DP. But once they start blocking it, the tables have turned. You’ve made them respect it, now they are teaching you about respect, you don’t get to do a -25 move on every wake-up for free.

I don’t know your skill level, but I’d start by learning your safe ■■■■. Learn to be patient on your wake-up and learn to block before learning to reversal. Then take one thing and add it in eg “today I’m going to throw out a few random dragon kicks and see what works”. Then take another thing like wake-up DP and add that in. So on. I’d also be very cautious about breaking blindly. You don’t have to be certain, but make sure you are learning ("Oh… I broke that because I thought it was a medium, but it was a heavy… noted).

If you are still new enough, you’ll actually start to lose before you start to win doing it this way. You won’t have access to that surprise big damage for a while. You’ll get hit a lot more while you are working on learning to block better. Etc. Don’t get frustrated, and know that the FG way is that you lose more by losing than winning (nothing saddens me more than seeing someone in bronze make it to silver by doing all of their unsafe shit because they are effectively stunted).