Reliable:
Kommo is pretty good at checking zarude, it tanks both stabs and can deal with band fairly reliably only really fearing CC, it also appreciates a lot of Zarude structures bringing Rillaboom, so it gets extra healing.
Mandibuzz also does a fairly good job, although it probably needs to run max defense to take the least amount possible from CC.
Togekiss is a mon that happens to have the lucky type combination that resists both stabs, it only really fears rock slide. A slight problem however is the fact that even with max defense it takes a crazy amount from band power whip.
The best Counter don't @ me
Great defensive mon already doesn't take damage from any of its moves, only thing it needs to watch for is a surprise acrobatics set.
usually better coupled with a dark resist, but it acts as a great scout to figure out what zarude is using, as well as inflincting helmet damage.
Shaky (Usually prediction reliant) :
needs to come in on a power whip, although it does have the nice bonus of having the static chance procing
/
metal birbs take whips well, corv crumbles to lariat but skarm can uuuuuusually live two, but only if its at full
252 Atk Choice Band Tough Claws Zarude Darkest Lariat vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Skarmory: 145-172 (43.4 - 51.4%) -- 9% chance to 2HKO
same as above, however it does outspeed zarude and can threaten it with u-turn or hurricane
(Physdef): How the mighty have fallen, takes over 60% from band whip, and a roll to 2hko with lariat, should only be used to scout once or twice and switch into a resist.
so while you do resist stabs + CC, you are also giving it the terrain boost, making whip do around 45-50%, which isnt great. Switch it in on a lariat or cc.
Hella Niche (You need to build around these)
Bulky Arcanine is actually kind of cool, can work on BO's with teleport,
ok hear me out, perishtrap sap sipper azu on stall
probably a worse zap, but hey, their zarude is out of commision if you get the burn!
like shnowshner said, rotom fan could be used more as a status spreader rather than an attacker, which is pretty fire. i definitely forgot abt t wave, toxic and will-o-wisp lmao
+20 Attack + Merciless 
+20 HP + Shadow Sneak 
+Diamond Storm 
+Competitive
+20 Sp.Def + Morning Sun 
: Loooove this, I'm a sucker for adding more offensive hazard setters, and this Drapion not only takes the cake for doing that, but also heavily abuses poisoned foes, I'm glad to see a pokemon that could viably run toxic spikes that isn't named pex.
: honestly, don't know how much this makes this mon better, feel like it won't really use shadow sneak? Feel like it's typing isn't too great defensively and that there are probably better ground types to run.
: this seems interesting, technically speaking this doesn't really boost it's offensive power, just makes it more reliable and gives it a chance to boost defense. I'm wondering if it would sometimes be worth to run Stone Edge over Storm in the rare case you want to try to get a crit tho. Definitely interesting.
: This seems very cool, would be great on spike stack structures, feel like it could be an annoying volt-turn core with zarude, but we'll see.
:This seems... interesting, I've heard a few times about using Emergency Exit with Recovery to allow it to become a bulky pivot of sorts with spikes to boot, personally I feel like pulling recovery off would be hard without getting a free switch, but I'm def interested in hearing more about this one. (Also would be like, the perfect zarude revenge killer, so I'm very interested)
