Street Fighter's Balrog is... Mike Tyson
When picking the template for the villainous boxer that Street Fighter fans know as Balrog, the developers at Capcom went straight for the top, patterning him after the devastatingly tough Mike Tyson. We admit the resemblance is pretty vague these days, what with the cartoonish directions the series has taken, but in the original versions of Street Fighter II, Balrog looked like a digital portrait of Tyson with weird, painted-on hair. And when you consider that Balrog's name in Japan is M. Bison - with the "M" presumably standing for Mike - it all starts to make sense. Balrog doesn't just look like Mike Tyson - he is Mike Tyson, or as close as you can get without an official endorsement. That's why the names of the game's four bosses (M. Bison, Vega, Balrog and Sagat) were reshuffled for the U.S. release: to avoid controversy or, worse, a potential lawsuit from Tyson's legally excitable promoter, Don King.
In spite of its completely unlicensed use of Tyson's near-likeness, however, Street Fighter II was weirdly prescient about Tyson's future. In one early bio released with the 1992 Super NES version, it was revealed that Balrog/Bison was banned from professional boxing for being too brutal. In 1997, reality imitated art, as Tyson's boxing license was revoked (for a little over a year) after he infamously bit off a chunk of Evander Holyfield's ear. Not like that was too difficult to predict, but still: creepy.
