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Balrog (M. Bison in Japan) is a character from the Street Fighter fighting game series.

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. 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.

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 brown boxing shoes. His hairstyle consists of short hair with cornrows in the front. In the Japanese version, concept art shows "Bison" on the waistband of his trunks.

Name change

When Street Fighter II was released in America, Capcom was afraid of a lawsuit from Mike Tyson over a character with his likeness and a similar sounding name (Mike Bison). 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.

Trivia

• Balrog's Japanese name Mike Bison was said to be a parody of Tyson, possibly bearing the name of "Michael Gerard Bison."
• His in-game portrait in the earlier games bore a resemblance to Tyson. Later games featured portraits of Balrog that didn't look like Tyson at all.
• A character named Mike appeared in the original Street Fighter as an opponent in the game. Mike was an African American who has a similar appearance, shares the same given name Balrog has in the Japanese version of the series (Mike Bison), backstory (both were banned from boxing after killing an opponent), and reason to why they entered the World Warrior tournament (to become wealthy). Despite this, Balrog and Mike are officially considered separate characters (as evident in All About Capcom Taisen Kakuto Games and other sourcebooks). This is considered one of the most confusing aspects of the series.
• In the live action Street Fighter movie, Balrog is depicted as an ex-champion boxer whose career was sabotaged by M. Bison. He is also a close friend of Chun-Li and E. Honda. He is played by actor Grand L. Bush.
• One of Balrog's win quotes in Street Fighter Alpha 3 is "Next time, I'm gonna bite your ear off!" This is a direct reference to Mike Tyson and the infamous ear-biting incident with Evander Holyfield.
• On the Super Nintendo ports of Street Fighter II, Street Fighter II Turbo and Super Street Fighter II, Balrog's win quote was changed from 'My fists have your blood on them' to 'Get up you wimp'. This is most likely censorship, to avoid using the word blood (the word 'blood' was also removed from a Final Fantasy SNES game) to comply with their 'family friendly' policy of the time.
• On the Street Fighter II: Champion Edition arcade machines Balrog's name is misspelled as Barlog. In turn, the announcer in Super Street Fighter II mispronounces Balrog's name as Barlog as well.

See also

• Street Fighter II
• Mike

Template:Major Street Fighter Characters

• Fictional African-Americans
• American computer and video game characters
• Fictional boxers
• Street Fighter characters