The Fighting Game Battle I HAVE to See

I've recently been getting back into fighting games, even though in an earlier post I had said I was totally over them. What, I can't change my mind?

Anyway, aside from trying to find a good arcade stick for the PS2 (and that is a story I will likely tell on another day), I've noticed that I've been going through match ups I would love to see between games and companies. I am sure that those of you who are familiar with fighting games have likely done this too at one point or another.

There was one match that kept coming up whenever I thought about it, and it seemed like an impossibility, but then Capcom and Namco announced they were collaborating on a versus project and now, this collision of two mighty forces seems poised to be unleashed upon the earth like a tsunami of awesome.

I am of course talking about the epic battle between Street Fighter's Zangief and Tekken's Kuma.



First, let's start with Zangief, a man who trained by wrestling bears. That's some Rocky-style improvised training there, though part of me thinks he didn't just wrestle those bears... after all, it gets lonely out in Siberia.

And with his extensive background in wrestling, he is a pile driving machine. He doesn't need fireballs or stretchy limbs or anything fancy like that... he gets the job done with just his hands and his feet.

So what happens when this hulking Russian terror meets up with a bear that was trained in deadly martial arts as well... you know, a bear like Kuma in the Tekken games.



Because the thing about Kuma is, he isn't just some wild bear. He is a trained martial artist and he likes fighting, and he has beaten some quality competitors, and he is a highly loyal and passionate combatant.

Oh, it is going to be a glorious match. And the fact that it is potentially going to be in not just one, but two games, well, that is awesome in and of itself. We have been waiting 16 years for those two colossal forces to meet... it is finally time to see if a large Russian man can piledrive a huge bear who has mad martial arts skills.

If it was in a movie, you'd watch that scene over and over again on DVD and on Youtube.



But as much as I love Kuma, I think Zangief would ultimately emerge as the winner of that battle, and there is no shame in that.

After all, there are some worse pairings Kuma could be involved with:



Of course, if we are talking about wrestling bears, I think that no one is going to beat the Luchabear, El oso pardo Magnífico. No one.

My question to everyone is, what two fighting game characters from different franchises would you like to see go at it?

(Is it wrong that I had the credit theme from Bloodsport swirling around my head as I wrote this?)

Tags: zangief, kuma, tekken, street fighter, capcom, namco, fighting games, harold and kumar, luchabear, coalition of awesomeness, bloodsport, kumite, stan bush