Maybe…
The characters of Street Fighter are drawn in hyperbole often with impossibly massive muscles (not to mention hands and feet) along with abilities that allow them to shoot plasma beams, teleport, temporarily ignite their limbs, and teleport. Still, on a good day, we figure there may be a few of these fantasy characters we’d have a chance of winning against in a fist fight.
Sure, it’s a goofy concept to begin with, but it’s also kind of fun essentially drumming up what may amount to a weakest character list for Street Fighter. We’ve figured there are five characters that, given the impossible situation, we’d put a buck or two on ourselves to win against. Continue on to see who they are.
In some ways, Dan is the most obvious pick for this list. He’s famously a joke character who was originally created to be a mockery of some Art of Fighting characters as SNK and Capcom took IRL jabs at one another for borrowing content in the early era of fighting games.
Dan is filled with pride that usually blinds him from how poor he performs across virtually all fronts. He performs noticeably worse versions of Ryu and Ken’s moves, and only tends to ever win when other fighters feel sorry for him and decide to put him over.
In some depictions Dan’s belt is tied noticeably incorrectly, and his pink gi is rumored to be a result of his accidentally washing an originally white gi amid a load of bright red clothes. He makes other silly mistakes, such as forgetting to put his dojo phone number on flyers meant to build his business.
Despite his being the son of a great warrior, everything Dan does tends to end in some form of comedic failure, and so we figure that if we fought him, he’d find a way to inadvertently ensure our victory.
Dan, More or Less, In His Element
One of the newest characters to join the Street Fighter universe, Lily Hawk was added to Street Fighter 6’s launch roster as a spiritual successor to T. Hawk. T. Hawk has yet to reach top tier status in the games he’s featured in, and thus far Lily has followed his example closely.
Lily is one of SF6’s worst fighters from a tier list standpoint, but also doesn’t have much to boast about in terms of winning within the narrative. Her story is widely untold as we only know of a few, non-combative interactions she’s had with other characters.
She’s characterized by naivety and clumsiness, which is exemplified in her Critical Art animation as she slips and falls during the execution of her command grab. Lily does wield a pair of formidable pogamoggans (war clubs), but she’s also a little girl. Dhalsim does notice a “great power” lying dormant within her, and suggest it might be the Satui no Hado.
If this power awakens, Lily could become a monster of a fighter not unlike Akuma, but until it does, we feel like we could probably take her.
Lily’s Hardest-Hitting Attack Is A Botch
At 6′ 10″ and nearly 240 pounds, Sodom is obviously a hulking beast of a human. That said, he’s one of the most ineffectual characters in Capcom’s Street Fighter/Final Fight universe, and that’s despite strong motivations.
Sodom is an American Japanophile, meaning he has an extremely strong interest in Japanese culture. This plays out to the point that Sodom identifies as Japanese and does his best to present as such, but in spite of the clear passion, he’s actually laughably bad at it.
His lacking grasp of the Japanese language is a source of comedy in Sodom’s short list of appearances, insisting on speaking in Japanese but always fumbling the words so that he makes goofy and nonsensical statements. He was able to ascend the ranks of the Mad Gear and gained notoriety for being undefeated in criminal underground wrestling matches, but that’s widely because he brought weapons to these fights where others were expecting only to wrestle.
Sodom has no notable wins amid any of his Street Fighter story lines, which are characterized by failure as he is often unable to achieve goals he sets out for himself, such as recruit E. Honda or defeat Guy. The closer we look at this character, the more we see that he’s fraudulent in almost every way – even in the avenues he’s most passionate about.
Sure, he’s still huge, but Sodom is all but a joke character who never seems to be able to make things go his way. We did say this would be a fist fight, and especially if he’s unable to use weapons like his sai or katana, we could see Sodom losing to anyone, perhaps by way of slipping on a banana peel and sealing his own fate.
Sodom Attempting To Talk Smack In Japanese After Winning
The one time we do see Sean win something is in Laura’s Street Fighter 3 arcade ending in Street Fighter 5. Laura is seen on the beach reading a magazine that shows Sean apparently winning a martial arts tournament, but here the focus is almost entirely on Laura as attention is quickly shifted away from Sean’s accomplishment and onto her leading training in her Brazilian jiu jitsu dojo.
We see Sean training behind Laura, though we know that he apparently goes on to abandon this fighting style as it isn’t represented Street Fighter 3, his one and only playable appearance thus far. Instead Sean tries to adopt a combination of shoto style and his own personal improvisations. It doesn’t go well, though, as Sean eventually becomes an annoying pupil of a hesitant Ken Masters.
Beating the game with Sean in Third Strike reveals an ending wherein he thinks he’s won, only to realize this was a dream from being knocked out in the preliminary rounds of the tournament. A frustrated Ken sends Sean away to go find and fight Ryu, which he does resulting only in repeated losses.
Sean is noticeably worried about being compared to Dan Hibiki, something that evidently happens often within the world of Street Fighter. He brings up Dan regularly as an example of weakness, which makes him come across as insecure. Given that Dan is the epitome of a joke character in this universe, the fact that people still do make comparisons doesn’t bode well for Mr. Matsuda.
It’s not to say that Sean might realize his goals and one day become a world class fighter, but he clearly isn’t there yet amid any of the instances we’ve seen him in. While we’re not confident we’d win in a game of one on one basketball, we feel we have a strong chance of landing a knock out punch in a hypothetical brawl with Sean.
Sean’s 3S Ending In Which He Wakes Up From A Victorious Dream To Realize He’s Been Knocked Out Early
This is easily the most controversial pick on our list, but hear us out. It’s true that Gen is often regarded as a contender for Street Fighter’s strongest character (he’s not, but he’s up there), and it’s true that he’s one of the most renowned assassins in all of China.
It’s also true, however, that he’s in a battle with late stage leukemia, and this hindrance is an active part of his theming and narrative. Still, we won’t sugar coat it. If Gen’s doing better than like 2% of his full potential, we’re done in a fight, but the more we see the old man the more we see him aging and coughing.
There’s reason to believe he’s actually dead by the time Street Fighter 6 rolls around on the timeline, but if he isn’t, perhaps he’s in a such a weakened state that we could actually hang.
Death Comes To All Who Live By The Warrior’s Code
What do you think of our picks? Are there other Street Fighter characters you think you could take in a fist fight? Let us know in the comments below.