ok some of you have some very mistaken ideas about mk. mk only has guaranteed death from upairs when he gets sour spot dash attack or uptilt at very specific percents, there is never any point except maybe vs dk or something when you get dthrown or sweetspot dash attacked and you are diing correctly where he has guranteed death. if you just camp by the ledge at those percents the most he can do is grab and throw you off for 10% with upthrow, which is basically nothing for sheik and zero suit who recover completely free and there is nothing he can do. literally the only way he can kill you if you camp the ledge is roll uptilt and a carefully spaced dash attack. its still going to happen obviously, but you cant just say "mk mains will get better at the combo" when there is nothing to improve. I cant do any better than killing you, the only room for improvement here is on the part of the opponent learning to get out of untrue hitconfirms and camping at the right time. for example i dont know how, but all of abadangos opponents dont tech bair, and they let him get away with shorthop autocancel upair to fullhop upair (this is never true, you can always mash airdodge to get out of autocancel shorthop upair to fullhop upair). as time progresses its obvious which of the two will improve, and it isnt mk.
as for his top tier matchups all of them are fine except sheik and zero suit. their neutral is better and their punish %wise are a bit worse or on par than mks, and that would be fine except for 2 problems, one of which being the range of their kill confirms off of grab is ridiculously huge. sheik 50/50s mk during an insanely huge range of something like 110-160%, and if shes in rage you can be in danger as low as 95~. unlike most characters mk simply trading with sheik up to high percents is actually really bad, mk is left with no confirms and needs to land upsmash, bair or yolo upb, while sheik threatens a kill off of any grab. if sheik plays her neutral at high percents just by staying grounded, then grab and dash attack lead to nothing and he cant really make anything happen. meanwhile zero suits early kills off grab are perhaps the easiest vs mk out of all top tier. mk will almost never fall out of upb and as with sheik, he dies during an incredibly huge range of like 30-70%. unlike most characters that can di a certain way to avoid death whether it be counting on falling out, or diing toward stage to avoid the side blastones, mk when he gets grabbed at ANY point in the entire stage is dead no matter what he does at certain points. and unlike when playing against mk, you cant camp the sides when in danger, because unlike mk, their grabs that dont require any space to run forward. The 2nd problem is that when you play vs sheik and zero suit camping the ledge the risk/reward is ridiculously in their favor. against any other character, it wouldnt even be a problem because when you knock them off, you get bonus damage from edge guarding and that brings them closer to regular kills percents. vs sheik and zero suit, you get one hit from grab or dash attack hitting them off, and then thats it. there is absolutely no way you can edge guard zero suit or sheik unless they get lazy. some characters can edge guard sheik and zero suit but mk is not one of them. when mk goes low to challenge, mk cant vertically keep up with their movement because of his low jumps, so anything he does can be reacted to with ease. they get back on stage, ledgehop and return to neutral on the other side of the stage. when sheik or zero suit land a hit its far worse because no matter where they get their hit, they dont need extra stage to get good damage, and mk getting put on the ledge is waaay worse than sheik or zss on the ledge because they their ledgehops are stupidly hard to react to because of bouncing fish and flip kick.
thats not even counting the fact that sheik and zero suits aerials (not as bad as sheiks) into the ground shut people out pretty bad and mk has no safe aerials into the ground and no autocancels to compete. all he can do is powershield, and when getting grabbed by them is that bad, its obvious who the risk/reward favors and who has to work harder here.
when i watch abadango he gets away with a loooot of things he shouldnt because people arent teching/playing the percents right. i remember a match he had vs a zero suit who was pretty shamelessly just camping the ledge who i thought he lucked out against pretty hard with roll uptilt, and should have lost if the zss hadnt dropped a grab confirm earlier if anyone wants to find that. also when any mk ive seen plays void its pretty bad. i remember abadango also played a set vs void (after he lost in crews with a 3 to 2 stock advantage) where he literally got every kill at 30-40% which meant everything was going as well as it possibly could, and still lost in the end. mr r also plays the same way now, i didnt see mr r vs tyrant but apparently he also just ran away, camped the ledge and won pretty convincingly. i know tyrant told me at genesis he wants to try sheik vs void now because he does better in the mirror than with mk, but since he got a recent win at a tournament he might stick with mk a bit more now that hes got some more confidence im curious to see how he does.
i think a lot of success with mk is really people playing that matchup really badly tbh i havent been convinced at all by anyones play yet. if tyrant plays mk optimally he might convince me though, its amazing how well he does when he drops combos so often and chooses unoptimal continuations. i think if he does optimal stuff he could compete at top level even down the road.
that said i think there is some untapped potential i dont see anyone else do, and that is with low % upair strings. i just shake my head in disappointment when i see people land dash attack at like 15% or dthrow at 30%, run forward whiff fullhop upair, miss and get punished. you couldve done sh upair, completed a full chain and done like 40 damage but instead got a cool 6% and got punished on hit well done. thats about it though unless theres a patch sheik and zero suit are just slowly going to get better until theres nothing he can do outside of multiple lucky confirms unfortunately.
- Sucks... Only saving graces are his range, how easy it is to knock Luma away, and the off chance you get an early kill. You're hilariously boned if she gets you in the air though. 
