Balrog

Balrog
Series	Street Fighter
First Appearance	Street Fighter II (1991)
Species	Human

Balrog, also known as M. Bison is a character from the Street Fighter series, first appearing as a non-playable boss in Street Fighter II before becoming playable in its update, Street Fighter II: Champion Edition. He is a disgraced American boxer and personal bodyguard to M. Bison.

Balrog is one of the few Street Fighter characters with a different name in Japan due to worries about his likeness to Mike Tyson. In Japan, the names of the bosses were swapped so that Vega is the original name of M. Bison, Balrog is the original name of Vega and M. Bison is the original name of Balrog. Due to this, the international community tends to refer to him as Boxer over regional differences.

Appearance and Personality

Balrog is a tall and muscular African American man. He typically wears blue tank top and boxing shorts with a pair of red boxing glove and boxing shoes. He has a similar appearance to American boxer, Mike Tyson. His playstyle revolves around very aggressive boxing.

Balrog is generally self-centered, hot-tempered, and sadistic. He is a belligerent fighter who possesses an insatiable urge for money and a vicious, bullying streak, often refusing to take responsibility for his actions. Despite being a once great prize boxer, Balrog has intentionally cheated in his fights whenever he felt like it, and has even killed one of his opponents (though by accident). Balrog is also shown to be somewhat unintelligent with when Shadoloo's leadership fell to him, the organization collapsed immediately.

Balrog's reasons for joining Shadaloo have always been to attain massive wealth, fame and glory to be set for life. As such, though Balrog would cheat, steal or even kill to this end, he is more greedy than actually evil, and takes little interest in Shadaloo affairs otherwise. He also relates to characters with similar motivations such as C. Viper.