Balrog (Street Fighter)

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“Mike Bison” redirects here. For the Street Fighter character named M. Bison outside Japan, see M. Bison.

For the Street Fighter character known as Balrog in Japan, see Vega (Street Fighter).

Balrog
Balrog in Capcom vs. SNK (SNK Groove).
Game series	Street Fighter series
First game	Street Fighter II
Voice actor(s)	Kouichi Yamadera
In-Universe Information
Birthplace	United States
Blood type	A
Fighting style	Boxing
Likes	Money, Women, Bourbon
Dislikes	Fish, Effort, Math
Special skill	Gambling
Affiliation	Shadoloo (former)

Balrog, known as M. Bison or Mike Bison (マイク・バイソン, Maiku Baison^?) in Japan, is a character from the Street Fighter fighting game series.

1 Story
2 Appearance
3 Name change
4 Related Characters
5 External links

[edit] Story

Balrog was once a great boxing champion and prize fighter. He was banned from boxing for permanently injuring his opponents (as well as his illegal maneuvers, particularly his headbutt), so he joined the Shadoloo criminal organization, and worked his way up from the bottom, eventually becoming Bison's enforcer. While running errands for M. Bison (Vega in Japan), he killed Dhalsim's elephant with a single Gigaton Punch. In one mission, Balrog was sent to terminate Birdie. Although he did not know why, Balrog went anyway. Birdie told him about the Psycho Drive, and Balrog agreed to help him find it, thinking he could make money from it. When the Psycho Drive exploded, Balrog realized that he had not been paid recently. When M. Bison was killed at the hands of Akuma, ownership of Shadoloo was transferred to the former prize fighter. Unfortunately, he ended up running the entire organization into the ground in record time. After the fall of Shadoloo, Balrog became nothing more than a bum on the streets.

[edit] Appearance

Balrog wears blue boxing trunks with white trim and a torn white shirt under a blue tank top. He wears red boxing gloves and boxing shoes. His hairstyle consists of short hair with cornrows in the front. In certain illustrations, his Japanese name, "Bison", can be seen on the waistband of his trunks, although it's usually censored when these illustrations are published outside Japan.

[edit] Name change

When Street Fighter II was localized in America, Capcom was afraid of a lawsuit from Mike Tyson over a character with his likeness and a similar sounding name (Mike Bison). Additionally, when the designers presented the game to Capcom USA's marketing department, they believed that the name Vega was a weakling's name.[1] They decided to rotate the names of three of the four boss characters in the following manner:

The African-American boxer is known as M. Bison in Japan and Balrog elsewhere.

The Spanish assassin bullfighter is known as Balrog in Japan and Vega elsewhere.

The evil dictator and head of Shadoloo is known as Vega in Japan and M. Bison elsewhere.

In discussions among American and Japanese players, Balrog is frequently called simply "Boxer".^{[citation needed]}