How do I counter Hawlucha/Gyarados?

Question

Because I'm new to competitive Pokemon, I want to know what Pokemon I could use to counter a Hawlucha or Gyrados in the Gen 8 OU singles tier. Thanks in advance!

Comments

Jolteon

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Why would you want to counter them when you can use your own Hawlucha and Gyarados?
@stall I'm pretty sure unburden Hawlucha can easily outspeed most Jolteon sets.

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@sumwun That's a good point, actually. If I ever go against one, then I need to be prepared to fight it. I can't have a team that's completely weak to Flying Press or Thunderbolt. And I don't want to lack something to fight it with.

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Puke the muku!!!
Aegislash for hawlucha.

Answer 1

There are plenty of Pokémon that deal with these two sweepers. Some of these are wall breakers like Copperajah, or Stonjourner. With these bulky guys, they should be able to take a hit and then strike back like a train. Copperajah with sheer force can do scary damage with iron head. Stonjourner, even with being a bad type matchup, has amazing physical defense (most Gyarados and Hawlucha users are physical attackers). This allows him to withstand a shot and come in with heavy slam. Since Stonjourner is about 1146 pounds, he’s gonna do a lot of damage.

If that’s not quite your style, then you can use quick sweepers to counter. For example, Dragapult or Jolteon. If you’ve already let Gyarados get a dragon dance or Hawlucha get swords dance, then these probably won’t work very well. But they are still very good in the meta. Jolteon is good in having thunderbolt and thunder which are usually pretty reliable moves. Dragapult has already been discovered in being one of the best Pokémon in OU right now so you know he’s gonna be good. Also, since he has a wide range of strategies in his move pool, your opponent shouldn’t be able to predict your play. In this case, you want to use psychic fangs or dragon darts in both having a very good base power. Hope this helped. Good luck.

Answer 2

The two are OP because of Dynamax, which is very controversial and may be banned relatively soon, so possibly the answer is wait a bit.

But there are a few ways to deal with them. They're extremely limited and require not amazing Pokémon to do it at times, but not impossible.

First of all, Haze Pokémon, specifically Toxapex, deals with the two well. Baneful Bunker and Haze allows Toxapex to stall out and remove boosts from the two, whilst resisting at least one of each of their STABs.

Corsola-Galaria can burn and strength sap both to cripple them. Ferrothorn can twave and best Gyarados but not Hawlucha. Runeigrius can burn and beat Hawlucha with Shadow Claw, immunity to max knuckle and his huge defence, but loses to Gyarados.

Offensively, it's very difficult, and comes down to being super aggressive with fast electric types and scarf Pokémon to prevent either Hawlucha or Gyarados from snow balling. Scarf Dracozolt, Galvantular, GDarm, Dragapult etc. Be super aggressive and avoid any play that lets either get on the field for free.