Those aren’t particular recognised bad matches for Sagat. Not at the un winnable by any stretch. Mak, Seth and Sakura are all 5-5 worst case scenario, Ibuki is a slight advantage but at the same time Gat can keep her out pretty well.
Lets pretend though and take those 4 you mentioned, tag on Dhalsim, Guy, Viper, Ryu, (now Juri if I swallow my initial figures) Fei Long, Akuma - You’ve got to be fucking Steven Hawking to even be on point in half of those matches. Put it this way , imagine entering a tournament and your route to the Final is - Guy, Ryu, Ibuki, Seth, Viper, Fei and Akuma (not hella unlikely) ? If I ran through that lot , I wouldn’t want a medal, I’d want a gawd damn Lamborgini with Angelina Jolie in the passenger seat.
Sagat’s just got to work overtime in a large portion of his matches, one mistake and it could be goodnight. How many top characters can you say that about? I mean Bison players bitch about Guile, but I’ll take one un winnable match over 8 difficult ones. I’m not even saying half of those matches are bad matches, but each of them pose a particularly difficult scenario that takes Sagat out of his game and puts him in a new one each time.
This post probably seems strange for me, but I go through swings with Sagat where I think he’s awesome, then I think he’s utter garbage.