Street Fighter Alpha/Balrog

Click here for more information about Balrog's other fighting game appearances.

As a boxer, Balrog has no kick attacks. All of the kick buttons make Balrog perform punches. 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).

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 no time. After the fall of Shadoloo, Balrog became nothing more than a bum on the streets.