There was a time when Capcom didn’t care much about adding iconic elements to the Street Fighter saga. It is no coincidence that half of Metro City’s thugs share names with bands and rock’n roll stars and the truth is that many of their fighters were singing tributes to iconic manga characters. The Balrog/M. Bison thing was exceptional, as it took Mike Tyson almost 30 years to realize how he got into the game without your permission. However, the most blatant case of the entire saga was and remains that of Zangief.
One of the open secrets of Street Fighter II was that there was a latent, although not implicit, rivalry between the original eight World Warriors beyond Ryu and Ken. Among the most obvious couples were Chun-Li and Blanka (Beauty and the Beast), two designs as opposite as that of Dhalsim and Honda and, of course, the tension of the cold war was manifested in Guile against Zangief. And we are not going to deny it, they were all clichés with legs, but with extra personality. However, Zangief’s was completely borrowed from a Soviet wrestling legend who was sweeping Japan: Victor Zangiev.
Born in 1962, and after emerging in his native Russia, the freestyle wrestler Victor Dzantemirovich Zangiev He was invited in 1989 to participate in New Japan Pro-Wrestling, participating in truly amazing matches against other professional wrestling practitioners from different disciplines, both Russian and Japanese. He offered not only brutal fights, but true shows in the ring against rivals who were at least a head taller than him.
Victor Zangiev soon captured the fascination of the Japanese public due to his unorthodox, extraordinarily colorful and absolutely brutal methods in execution, including suplexes and piledrivers that practically looked like super attacks from current fighting games. And we are not going to deny it, his appearance did not go unnoticed when facing the stars from both sides of the Sea of Japan.
Victor Zangiev’s prolific Asian tour will continue until the end of 1990. Months before the release of Street Fighter II
Did Victor Zangiev know that he had sneaked into Street Fighter? What we do know is that Zangiev returned to Japan in 1994 (the same year in which Super Street Fighter II Turbo) to participate in the UWF International and that in October of that same year he decided to retire. We also know that since 2022 he has been dedicated to training little aspiring fighters en Vladikavkazsouth of European Russia.
The popularity of the saga Street Fighter It exploded in the 90s, retains its strength today and in the process has left us with icons with a global impact that transcends generations. And, although that arcade phenomenon did not take long to have countless substitutes and clones with more or less blatant copies of Ryu, Guile or Zangief himself, it is necessary to admit that Capcom knew how to find its inspiration in the real world and capture it with mastery and extra nerve in his video games.
Because the only thing that the creators of Street Fighter II is that that fighting game born in the arcades was going to make history, set a new standard and even overwhelm many of its influences in popularity. Was Zangief the saga’s last tribute to a real-world fighter? We already told you that no. But the funny thing, what is truly unusual, is that now it is professional wrestlers who are directly inspired and they dress like Street Fighter characters. Life takes more turns than a spinning pile driver!
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