Thanks Ryan. I'll be practicing this today. edit: Wow. wasn't expecting to get it within 2 minutes of posting this. Also an interesting thing that's happened during my practice-- jump cancel lariat works too. Now to just get it consistent. edit 2: Confirmed this does in fact work with Manon for anyone who wanted to ask was this a Gief only thing because of more jumpsquat frames or something. Absolutely free for Gief players though.
Keep in mind that you have to perfectly time your jump cancel window to specifically avoid the active frames of their throw window. For example in this scenario, Luke's throw is active on frames 1-3 of your wake-up. Pretend Luke throws 1F later, then it overlaps frames 2-4 of your wake-up, still meaty. You can still avoid that throw timing with your input, since you executed the SPD on Zangief's last pre-jump frames (frame 5), but then it would be a frame perfect 1F timing if you are jumping from the first frame of wake-up. Now pretend Luke throws 2F later, then it overlaps frames 3-5 of your wake-up, still it is meaty. Now you can no longer avoid his throw if you immediately wake-up with a jump cancel, because his throw still covers the 5th and final pre-jump frame which you canceled here into an SPD, which makes you eligible to be thrown on frame 5. So, if you want to avoid a meaty throw that covers frames 3-5 of wake-up, then you have to input the SPD motion, then manually delay your jump until a few frames AFTER wake-up, and then press punch to finally complete the SPD input, within the 5F pre-jump window. Yes, you can jump cancel specials to avoid throws, but the timing required to do so can be EXTREMELY specific, often frame perfect, and since the opponent throwing you can vary their timing ever so slightly, you have to essentially just guess as to what their throw timing is going to be, as well as executing perfectly on what you guessed would be their throw timing. And this is even less feasible on characters with the regular 3F pre-jump windows, since throws have 3F active, so the person has to press up on the exact frame the throw's active frames begin. Which is super unrealistic to do especially since the throw can also be 1F off your timing and then you're thrown. Just something to keep in mind when you're attempting to do jump cancels. I would never recommend attempting it on most characters. However Zangief and Lily do make it a bit more feasible since they have 2F longer (5F) pre-jump windows.
