Kabutops

Kabutops is a very dangerous Pokemon and among the best Swords Dance users in OU. First of all, its base 115 Attack stat is very respectable, and it sports the best high critical hit rate move in the game—Slash. While this may seem counterproductive for Swords Dance, since in RBY critical hits ignore stat boosts, it means Kabutops can pose an immediate threat without having to raise its Attack. Slash also gives it wallbreaking potential, mostly because critical hits also ignore Reflect. Because Kabutops can switch in on recovery moves such as Rest and Recover and immediately pose a threat, it commonly forces the opponent to switch in a check that lacks recovery, like Exeggutor or Tauros, to force it out. This means Kabutops will do permanent damage. Its typing grants it a valuable resistance to Normal and Ice. This means it can freely set up against Pokemon such as Cloyster, sometimes against Chansey without Thunderbolt (depending on circumstance, the threat of Thunder Wave may pose a problem) and on any variant of Snorlax not packing Earthquake—or the very rare Thunderbolt.

However, while Kabutops's typing is certainly one of its key assets, it also leaves it with very unfortunate weaknesses to Electric and Ground. This means it can't switch in as much as it would want against Rhydon despite its Surf and good Defense. Also, Kabutops is easy to force out with Thunderbolt users such as Jolteon, Zapdos, Gengar, Starmie, and Lapras—the first four outspeed it, and Lapras easily survives a +2 Hyper Beam. Kabutops can struggle to discourage them from switching in, giving them great momentum. Surf is weak enough against them to almost give a free switch. A Hyper Beam use can be punished by Gengar, while Swords Dance usually gives free entry to Thunderbolt users. Every move besides Slash is fairly easy to punish—and Gengar even ignores that, countering Kabutops outright. Slash is still a great move and helps deter these threats, but again its critical hits ignore Swords Dance boosts. Therefore, if these threats can pressure Kabutops into using Slash often, they reduce its threat ceiling in practice. Also, Hyper Beam's 10.4% miss chance or Kabutops's 15.6% critical hit rate can just ruin its sweep, a likely scenario if Kabutops is expected to KO several Pokemon consecutively.