If you are a male between the ages of 21 and 32 there is a strong chance you threw away hours of your life on Street Fighter II. The game was a complete game changer selling over six million copies and setting up the future of fighting video games starring Ryu & Ken and dudes who remarkably resemble Ryu & Ken.
Now if you are anything like me, you have probably thought about the character traits for Street Fighter’s finest and compared them to the fighters that inhabit fighting circles in this wild game of homosexual skinhead fighting from time to time.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m going to take a look at that while using my sexy words to hopefully entertain you for the next few minutes, enjoy.
Ryu & Lyoto Machida
Since before they were out of diapers both Ryu and Machida were kicking shit and being moulded into certified badasses by their mentors before being unleashed on the world in their twenties where both were soon at the top of their respective divisions.
On the surface, both seem pretty harmless. Your typical “UFC fan” in his torn-up Affliction jeans and foiled-up Tapout tee with a dragon eating a baby on it would probably think he could smoke these two with his winging hays he learned watching season 7 of The Ultimate Fighter.
In reality, he would be floored with a twelve-punch combination before he knew he was in a fight and his sex life would be ruined as none of the ladies at his local watering hole would think he, or his tribal tattoos were tough any longer.
Anyway, back on topic. When a fight breaks out, both of them are probably there. The pair of karate black belts are lightning-fast and throw a various array of kicks and punches, the only thing missing is for Machida to pull off a Hadoken.
Ken & Mauricio Rua
When I was eight-years-old mashing buttons and thinking I was hot shit on my Super Nintendo I never really got Ken. Yes, he was a badass and defied gravity leaping into the air and doing four spinning kicks to his opponents [Your move, Anthony Pettis] but he always just seemed like Ryu’s sidekick.
Well if I wasn’t an impatient, hyperactive douchebag I would have read the storyline as it went on instead of smashing the A-button repeatedly to get through that boring talking to really know that Ken was ultimately the foil to Ryu.
As Ryu busted up Sagat and held the mantle of pound-for-pound king of Street Fighter it was his childhood friend and sparring partner that ultimately figured out the puzzle of Ryu, similarly to how Mauricio “Shogun” Rua leg kicked the shit out of Machida to spoil the Machida error.
Not to mention, both beat dudes up in pretty dramatic fashion too, with a large emphasis on their feet. While Ryu was doing flying-whatever-the-hell-he-wants and Rua was soccer kicking and foot stomping at the end of the day it’s all the same.
Chun-Li & Michelle Waterson
When I was in my early youth all girls had girl germs so I felt I had to use the germ lock just to beat this woman up. Thus, making it much harder to defeat her while locking my fingers and mashing the keypad.
On a moderately serious note, Chun-Li was a ground-breaking character for her time, being the first lady of fighting games and laying the groundwork for every fighting game in the future to have provocatively dressed women that can beat dudes up.
Chun-Li is introduced as a character seeking to avenge the death of her father who was killed at the hands of the final boss of the series, M. Bison who is the leader of the criminal organization Shadaloo.
Similarly to Chun-Li is Michelle Waterson. The Street Fighter star and “The Karate Hottie” are deceptively dangerous individuals. As an onlooker you would not suspect that either makes their bones using their naked size eleven boot.
Both pocket sized fighters have been trained since a young age and are some serious ass kickers, while one has to face dudes and the other gets to fight her female counterparts Chun-Li and Waterson are seemingly cut from the same cloth.
Guile and Brian Stann
When I was a kid, I wanted to be just like Guile but I couldn’t grow my damned flat-topped Mohawk nor did I ever learn how to do a backflip kick so none of this ever materialized. Briann Stann on the other hand, it’s fair to assume was injected with a far larger dose of manliness than myself and chose to follow in the footsteps of Guile.
Guile was a Liutenant in the Air Force before his best friend was murdered by M. Bison [Sensing a pattern here] so now he joins this fictitious illegal street fighting universe to avenge his friends death and show off how much of a badass he is flinging energy beams from his arms.
Similar to Guile, Stann served in the Marines and moonlighted as a mixed martial artist before making the jump full-time into cage-fighting. Although Stann fights to line his pockets, not avenge a death they are both no-nonsense, hard-hitting fighters.
In all honesty, do I need to continue jibber-jabbing? This one pretty much speaks for itself. Two square-faced, American-as-shit, mean-mugged dudes who have an advanced degree in inflicting violence on mere mortals.
Blanka & Clay Guida
Here is another one that is completely obvious, if Clay Guida was green, had orange hair and a physique that would make everyone question Nevada’s drug testing policy you would just assume they are one of the same.
Both Guida and Blanka have an inner electricity [Geddit?] that make them dangerous at all times. For Blanka if you are one of those dicks that jumps around throwing kicks like you’re the Karate Kid then you’ll probably get electrocuted when you come down.
For Guida, if he electrocuted people there would probably be a problem with it in this day and age. Although, I have read the MMA rulebook and there is no rule against it, these darn promoters and athletic commissioners would find issue with it I’m sure.
Instead he opts to use his electricity to move faster than a speeding bullet and never get tired like a real-life Energiser Bunny.
Dhalsim & Jon Jones
This one didn’t come as easy as others. Mainly due to the Super Fight League never producing an Indian superstar that fits this bill [What’s up with that Ken Pavia?] The only person who has long-as-shit limbs and can ragdoll people like nothing is our 205-pound king Jon Jones.
The fire-breathing stretchy Indian with pupil-less eyes has a similar frame to Jones and was smarter than Stefan Struve realizing early on that ‘Hey I can stand out here and smash that guy in the face until he falls over’.
Both Dhalsim and Jones are stoic, self-disciplined fighters who mean business when they fight. While one fights to rescue his village and the other fights to line his pockets and keep his Nike sponsorship, in the end, it doesn’t even matter.
Zangief & Brock Lesnar
I think it’s fair to assume that when Brock Lesnar wasn’t rounding up cattle, lifting heavy shit or doing whatever else farm boys from Webster, South Dakota do, he was aspiring to be just like Zangief because the USSR native essentially laid the blue print for his success.
Zangief is a seven-foot-tall, 250-pound behemoth that towered over his opponents. Wrestling bears and anything else that’s vicious and has teeth in his youth he would go on to be a professional wrestler before his fighting career [Now c’mon, aside from the bears part that’s pretty much spot on]
The similarities between these two don’t stop there, their offence essentially all relies on power with little technique as they ragdoll their opponents around.
I’m sure if in the Street Fighter early-nineties 2-D world Zangief could shoot for a power double-leg he would be mashing faces with relentless hammer fists too but unfortunately he couldn’t so he had to settle for a spinning piledriver.
E. Honda & Mark Hunt
This one is going to need a little bit of magination, along with a time machine. Today’s slimmer and downright better version of Mark Hunt isn’t the one we’re looking for. We’re looking for the Mark Hunt from the glory days of Pride, remember him?
Yup, it’s officially 2004 again, thus making half of the things I wrote about earlier irrelevant. The 260-plus-pound super-heavyweight that was head kicking and atomic butt-dropping anyone in the Pride Fighting Championships ring was a great fit for E. Honda.
While he did not come from a Sumo background because, frankly, he isn’t a complete idiot, Hunt was highly regarded in his home land as a kickboxer before flying out to test his might against the best.
Similar to E. Honda it took a while before he found success and even when he was a household name, his win-loss record was far from dazzling. That being said, if Mark Hunt could have flown at his opponents like a freaking lawn dart I am confident that he would be undefeated.
Balrog & Quinton Jackson
Balrog was thrown into the Street Fighter realm as a play-off on heavy-hitting boxing star Mike Tyson. While Tyson was busy getting beaten by “Buster” Douglas and “allegedly” raping 18-year-old girls at this point of his career, he was still one of the most feared men on the planet.
Balrog is a hard-hitting, arrogant, mean-mugging sort of dude who is here to make some serious Benjamin’s. Add in the “Rampage” persona, a hilarious personality and a fondness for Japanese ladies and you pretty much have Jackson in a nutshell.
Balrog might strike fear into his opponents easier due to the fact that not only did he kill a fighter in a sanctioned boxing affair, he also killed one of Dhalsim’s elephants with his powerhouse left-hook on a trip to India. Seriously, he killed a fucking elephant.
“Rampage” didn’t want the RSPCA to be on his ass during his fighting career so he chose to have a light-hearted approach to doing the same thing, breaking faces and making paper.
Vega & George St. Pierre
Vega was doing this Ultimate Fightin’ business long before it was cool. In the late-eighties the ninjitsu expert [Scott Morris, what’s up?] was a master of the underground cage fighting circuit with a creepy ugly-people-must-die fetish or whatever.
If the guy didn’t have Wolverine-esque claws and cage-flipping knife-wounding attack you would expect to see him at Pride. The parade, not the now defunct Japanese fighting organization. But he has just enough manliness to get by.
Now, this must seem like I’m about to really rag on the UFC welterweight kingpin and his sexuality but I am fully aware that George St. Pierre is wealthy enough and has the contacts to find where I live, hunt me down and beat me up, so I will not go in that direction.
Instead, I will take a look at the fighting style of Vega and the 170-pound king. Both are light on their feet, agile and being the big bosses of the levels force you to have to beat them within the time limits or suffer the consequences of just being a challenger.
Sagat & Anderson Silva
Sagat was, and is still, the manliest man that ever manned. Covered head-to-toe with scars and sporting a bitchin’ eye patch the seven-foot-five Muay-Thai stylist was the undisputed pound-for-pound king of underground fighting for years before Ryu spoiled the party.
Sound familiar? Anderson Silva might not be in excess of seven-foot but he is a thai stylist and the king of mixed martial arts. Plus, I’m supremely confident that if Ryu showed up in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Hadoken’s and all, Silva would make him his bitch.
While on the surface it might not seem that way, Sagat and Silva have similar personality traits. Training to perfect their craft for a long time, both have earned the right to be considered at the top of their field and are strong-willed, confident and dedicated fighters.
M. Bison & Fedor Emelianenko
Now I am sure a few of you have already scoffed at the idea of the jovial, chubby Russian portraying the evil, key antagonist that runs an underground criminal organization and runs tournaments for his buddies to tussle with the strongest fighters in the world for reasons not really explained, but hear me out.
In the original incarnation of the M. Bison character before he started using stanazolol and human growth hormones he was essentially an average being — A tall frame with little muscle tone and a few love handles — Sounds a little like Fedor Emelianenko to me.
As an outside looking in, Emelianenko looks like your accountant who depression eats because nobody loves him. Yet, he was forever regarded as the king of the heavyweight landscape, making him the final boss that nobody overcame for almost a decade.
Emelianenko might not strive for world domination or have a mysterious power known as “Psycho Power” [whatever the hell that is] but everything else points to the Russian.
