The thing with Shadow is, and I know I'm going to make people groan when I say this, he straight up hasn't used the moves that Sonic uses in Smash besides the specials.
Sonic's moveset in Smash is literally mostly derived from his Sonic The Fighters moveset.
His forward tilt is his Horse kick:
Forward Smash is the Windup Punch:
His Fair is from Emerald Drive:
Up Air scissor kick is just Scissor Punch but with his feet:
He also had a lot of spin attacks in both Fighters and Battle, thus his 8,000 different spin attacks in Smash.
Ironically enough the one move that is taken from Battle is his Dair, which is from Shadow:
Sonic's fighting style in Battle and other games is basically Capoeira, a martial art that combines elements of dance and acrobatics. Even in Smash, that style is realized through his Down-Smash in 4 and Ultimate where he does the splits. Shadow
could do all of this in that there's nothing stopping Sakurai from making him an echo... it's just that he literally hasn't done any of that. Shadow doesn't fight with high-speed dance moves or wind-up punches, he manipulates and channels Chaos energy and even engulfs his fists with it, distorts space and manipulates space-time. He does this many, many times and has never displayed the bulk of the moves above or from Sonic's moveset in Battle. Shadow's only a clone because he uses Spin Dash, Homing Attack and Light Speed Dash, that's it.
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