Capcom's most famous fighting series, Street Fighter has shipped over 35 million copies worldwide, and generated millions of dollars more through the milking of quarters from the pockets of children in arcades. With the first installment released in 1987 and Street Fighter V hotly anticipated for 2016, perhaps the most interesting facet of the franchise's storied history is how it has both been largely inspired by and emulated the styles of real fighters, but itself served as an inspiration to a generation of combat sports athletes. A case of art imitating life and then life imitating art.

UFC heavyweight and kickboxer, Pat Barry famously remarked that one of his greatest fighting inspirations was Sagat from Street Fighter, also ranking Sagat top on a list of men he wouldn't want to fight, above Mike Tyson. Yet a young Barry might have been unaware that Sagat was largely inspired by the real Muay Thai icon, Sagat Petchyindee. So Barry was inspired by a video game character, which in turn was inspired by a real life fighter. Convoluted, but also sort of wonderful!

A great many of the men and women fighting in top flight organizations grew up playing arcade fighters like Street Fighter and side scrolling beat-'em-ups like Streets of Rage, and it is these games along with the martial arts cinema of the day which we owe for introducing them to the martial arts of the world.

With Street Fighter both providing inspiration for youngsters and drawing inspiration from the elite fighters of the last thirty years, it is well worth doing a whistle-stop tour of the world, through the styles portrayed in the Street Fighter series and a few of the goofier looking techniques which have found their way into real combat sports.

The Shotos – Karate

Street Fighter Imitating Life

Ryu, Ken, and Akuma all seem to be based on the harder, striking based styles of karate, and share similar move sets in the Street Fighter games. Ken's use of the axe kick, and the tornado kicks of Ryu and Akuma certainly remind one of the king of flamboyant karate kicking—Andy Hug. In fact, Hug was approached to choreograph the fight scenes and serve as 'martial arts advisor' for Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, a role which he embraced whole-heartedly.

Andy Hug was a human highlight reel. From wheel kicks to the head, to using his famous Hug Tornado kick to chop out an opponent's standing leg as they kicked, to breaking ribs with his round kicks. In Japan of the 1990s, Hug was the man. After picking up titles in full contact karate from 1980 to 1991, he transitioned to kickboxing and started beating the best in the world in that arena from 1992. If the Street Fighter II development team were studying karateka in 1990, Hug would have been hard to miss.

Life Imitating Street Fighter

Last time I wrote about Street Fighter, we examined Ryu's famous step up side kick, with the beautiful example of Jon Jones sending Vitor Belfort to the floor in the UFC. We also looked at the Satoksu Wari / collar bone breaker, and examined how Roman Nesterenko had been utilizing the punch in full contact karate competition.

But perhaps the most interesting recent development in bringing Street Fighter to life in the cage was Frankie Edgar's attempt to throw Ryu's left hook into wheel kick combination. He's broken the seal, now others will try this goofy feeling but also beautifully chained pairing, and one day we'll get a gorgeous knock out from it!

Where Next?

More recently, the SF crew decided to give Ryu a weirdo charge attack where he steps into 'horse stance' with his feet parallel to punch. Anyone who went to a martial arts class or two as a kid will remember punching from horse stance—it's pretty much useless. You can't generate respectable forward power in any stance with your feet level, and all it does is create bigger target for the opponent. That is... unless you're real smart about it.

The aforementioned Andy Hug, sadly no longer with us, utilized a very similar step-up, feet-level straight punch to defeat numerous men with better boxing technique. But how? The trick was that he got his opponents scared of his left leg. To the point where if he moved it, they instantly braced to take a powerful round kick. At that point he'd pump out an arm punch straight down the centre. It was the timing more than the power of the movement which caught the opponent off guard and put him on wobbly legs, and Hug was always ready to follow up.

Elena – Capoeira

Street Fighter Imitating Life

Capoeira is the Brazilian dance martial art with all the cartwheels and kicks from the floor. It's graceful, unpredictable, and every single fighting game seems to have a character who practices it. What's really interesting about Elena is that she isn't Brazilian, she's from a small tribe in Kenya. Perhaps inadvertently, the Street Fighter development team hit on an debate which rages amongst capoeira historians: where is capoeira actually from?

Many declare it is a Brazilian creation because it began with African slaves in Brazil. This was at a time when the Portuguese were cracking down on any expression of African culture (and bear in mind that the slave trade did not take its victims from one community, they were a discordant mix of languages and cultures). Others believe it may have been an older African tradition, or the product of multiple African fighting / dancing traditions.

What is certain is that capoeira has looked very different from era to era. At one point, street gangs used capoeira and the many level changes and gymnastics to get in close and low with cut-throat razors. Today, capoeira can be a dance, a game, or a fighting art, and there are even two different major traditions: Angola and Regional. But the earliest accounts of capoeira in Brazil are of two black capoeiristas diving head first at each other's chests, attempting to knock each other down with head butt, and using gymnastic movements to evade the opponent's lunges.

Capoeira has its practitioners fight out of the ginga or 'swing' and Elena's style is consistent with this. This is the rhythmic shifting from one foot to the other. The point of this is that rather than holding a stance, as in most fighting arts, one is constantly in motion—an elusive target, rather than a well protected one. Though this principal also serves well to support the theory of capoeira being a fighting art disguised as a dance during the aforementioned crackdown on African culture in Brazil.



Go try it yourself!

Life Imitating Street Fighter

Anderson Silva was always reluctant to lead in his fights. He was a counter-fighter, aware of every opening an attack made, and understandably that gave him his own insecurities about moving first. One of the nice ways he hid his rare leads was to come out of the ginga, being an avid capoeirista in his spare time. Yes, his hobby when he wasn't being a full-time martial artist was practicing a different martial art.

Perhaps the nicest example of any pure capoeira being brought into an MMA game is what the Street Fighter team decided to call the Spinning Scythe.

Historically, any wheel kick has been written off as “that'll get you taken down in and instant in MMA”. And, that is a view that needs to be respected. If you overshoot a hook or wheel kick, or the opponent steps in past it, you have either given up your back or put your leg on his shoulder so he can slam you on your head. However, showing the wheel kick from far enough back makes people very scared to step in. You can't step in if you're too far out to, after all.

The wheel kick of capoeira, with the hand (or both hands) placed on the floor, is called the meia lua de compasso, and a Brazilian fighter named Marcus Aurelio has made something of a specialty of it.

Notice how the first kick, from way out of range, serves to keep the opponent from stepping in. It is the second kick, following the opponent into the corner, which does the damage. Against anyone but the most unflappable opponent, this is a terrific way to force retreat and to follow up.

And that ginga ideal of constant motion seems to really help against counters.



Sprawling straight off the recovery! I'd say 'textbook', but you won't see that in any manual.



Ready to follow up with a knee.

Where Next?

The first person to successfully chain a wheel kick into a same leg back kick in the UFC should be awarded some kind of cash prize. With the number of taekwondo style fakes, switches and turns we're seeing in the modern mixed martial arts, I would never consider it out of the question.

I had a lot more to cover today—Yun and Yang's Wing Chun, E. Honda and Sumo, Abel being an obvious homage to Fedor Emelianenko in both look and style—but time constraints will force me to save those for another day. If you're a fight game fan, look into martial arts. If you're a martial artist, have another look at the games of your youth! You never know where the next idea so crazy it just might work will come from.

Here's some footage of UFC heavyweight and K-1 Grand Prix champion, Mark Hunt dunking some casuals to keep you smiling until Monday, when we'll start losing our minds over Conor McGregor versus Chad Mendes.

Check out these related stories:

Street Fighter in the UFC: Hadoukens and Izuna Drops

Ryu vs. Lyoto: Bryan Lee's Fantasy Matchmaking

I Found MMA Through Street Fighter II