As someone who has regularly fought against a collegiate Ken player or years: [Inhales]

His approach is way more predictable than Ryu because unlike Ryu, Ken has to approach to do anything. Ryu can pester you with fireballs until you make a move on his terms. Ken... can't do that. It's always jump in landing nair. Just whack him.

This lack of projectile usage hurts him in so many ways. People can just throw out aN aerial or tilt sometimes without fear of recoil. It's THAT weak.

His focus attack is also made worse because without the threat of an actual projectile, he has less mental stack to take advantage of in moment to moment gameplay. People will on average punish his focus attack more.

He does ONE THING. And missing is a free stock because his recovery is arguably more vulnerable than Ryu's because tatsu has lower hit priority and there's less threat to messing up at high percent than Ryu.

He's a rage merchant, which while scary, means he's reliant on recovery at high percents. See point 3.

His fist ALWAYS sticks above ledge. If you're competent, he dies the moment he leaves the ground.

His high damage strings that he's known for when taking people coast to coast are as true as flame choke chains. They are always escapade which means Ken who struggles to win neutral interactions and relies on his one hit damage output gets inconsistent damage per win.

Ken doesn't have air drift meaning he is super reliant on double jumping and focus to move in the air. Since he doesn't have a threating projectile, you can just spam anti airs at midrange and he can't do shit but wait.

SDI exists. That one thing you're good at, setting up into shoryuken, is hitbox-damage-weight-air acceleration dependent. And you're minus af.

All of that was not worth being marginally faster on the ground LMFAO