I only played this once on my friends Switch, I found myself preferable to Super Geon because of the fact that while spamming attacks I somehow pulled off the ability to grow his horn, then rip it off to use as a weapon. Quickly found it to be rather useful when I had the chance and learned the buttons combination (Though I've forgotten it now.)
On the Super Nintendo version, you use the dpad when the enemy grabs you and if you're fast enough, you can win every time. On the arcade version, you have to mash the buttons, and it seems that your chance of winning the grapple goes down each time you do it to the point that it doesn't seem possible to counter it at all.