Posted by Tomas Rios
In every arcade, it stood there like some monolithic challenge to greatness: We're talking about "Street Fighter." And for MMA fans, the similarities between the pastime of yesterday and the entertainment of today are eerily similar. So join me for a stroll down memory lane in the coming days as we find the MMA stars of today who best match our pixelized avatars of old.
B.J. Penn-Ken
Josh Hedges/Zuffa/UFC
Like Ken from "Street Fighter," B.J. Penn isn't one to let just his fists do the talking.
If nothing else, we know that B.J. Penn has a chip on his shoulder roughly the size of China. The guy has not an ounce of give in him and the talent to back up his perpetual motor mouth. If Penn isn't reading from the same script as Ken, he must at least have the same agent.
That's what makes Penn fun to watch and it's what makes Ken such a fan favorite. Talent combined with a borderline unhealthy appreciation of your own talent will make you a polarizing figure and Ken's perma-smirk and flashy offense took that status to the extreme. Personally, I can't remember anyone I loved dropping a quarter-fueled beating on more than the blond-haired pretty boy with the never-ending sneer.
If you want any more proof that these two are a match, hunt down Penn and tell him that there's no way he could ever bust out a fireball special in the cage. I've got $20 that says he spends the next decade in some forest and comes out looking to take you up on your challenge.
Georges St. Pierre-Ryu
Mark J. Rebilas for ESPN.com
Speed, power, an unquenchable thirst for the next challenge. Remind you of anyone, gamers?
Ryu is the vintage fighting game character, a balanced model of speed and power with an offensive arsenal designed to create problems for opponents of every style. Watch a Georges St. Pierre fight and you might wonder if he's actually a video game character come to life. I know everyone thinks of "The Karate Kid" when St. Pierre rocks the karate gi to the cage but I see more than a hint of his "Street Fighter" counterpart.
Even their fighting careers mirror each other: Ryu's never-ending quest for the next challenge and St. Pierre's fight schedule that reads like a who's who of MMA. The all-consuming search for greatness seems not to lie in beating the current challenger, but in beating him in order to move on to the next one. At least in the case of St. Pierre, we get to watch a titan of combat sports go after the biggest fish he can find, unlike certain other pugilists who shall remain unnamed (… … Pretty Boy Floyd … cough).
So while fight fans wait on The Pretty One to decide whether he actually wants to accept another challenging bout, the MMA fan gets to see the wandering warrior take on all comers. In other words, St. Pierre is the best thing Canada has given the world since Jim Carrey, pre-funny lobotomy. (Man, remember when that guy was funny?)
Anderson Silva-Sagat
Ed Mulholland for ESPN.com
Like his arcade counterpart, Silva is virtually unstoppable when he's at the top of his game.
Two towering muay Thai practitioners with a penchant for blink-and-you'll-miss-it mass-scale destruction. This one is a gimme. So much so, in fact, that I can't be the only one who got flashbacks when Silva turned Chris Leben's flapping gums into a mouthful of busted teeth. After all, if you played "Street Fighter," you surely got the Anderson Silva treatment the first time you crossed Sagat.
Careerwise, the similarities are just as obvious: Sagat started out as top dog in "Street Fighter" mythology, before getting knocked down a peg; Silva's status as MMA's pound-for-pound kingpin is now in question after a pair of less-than-enthralling performances. Silva may not have the matching chest scar, but I've heard that Demian Maia is close to mastering the dragon fist.
Regardless, nothing is more fun than watching Silva when he's on -- it's like watching Michael Jordan turn the Clippers into a pile of ankleless blobs. The same goes for watching some hapless button-masher try to last more than 15 seconds when Sagat arrives on the scene. I may see one of them more than another nowadays, but both still bring a smile to the face of anyone who graduated from quarters to pay-per-view.
Rashad Evans-Zangief
Ric Fogel for ESPN.com
One false move is all it takes against the opportunistic Rashad Evans.
At first glance, the quicksilver, fast-twitch style of Rashad Evans doesn't exactly jive with the lumbering titan that is Zangief. Besides a shared wrestling background -- Evans wrestled humans in college while Zangief preferred the challenge of bears -- the similarities are about as abundant as my reserve of patience for Glenn Beck's tear tantrums. However, anyone who had the misfortune of underestimating Zangief as some dim-witted clod was soon greeted with the "Street Fighter" equivalent of an Evans right hook, the spinning pile driver.
That is what makes these two a perfect match: Both appear relatively harmless, what with Evans' baby-face smile and Zangief's leaden movement, but give either of them a chance and you're on the bullet train to pain. Whereas most mixed martial artists thrive on creating offense from the opening bell, Evans is oddly zen, nearing standing narcolepsy, while the skillful veteran Zangief knows he need only let his opponent chase after him before turning the tables and unleashing an arsenal of moves that would have the entire WWE roster jealous.
Underestimated and underappreciated, that is the common thread in Evans' career as a fighter and Zangief's less-significant run as a 2-D sprite.
Either way, the fans who stuck with Evans and the players who did the same with Zangief look like geniuses right about now.
Fedor Emelianenko-M. Bison
Daniel Herbertson
Fedor Emelianenko has the uncanny ability to do things guys his size shouldn't be able to do -- kind of like "Street Fighter's" M. Bison.
In my own youth, the image of the game's final boss, M. Bison, tossing me aside regardless of how many coins I dumped into that machine reminds me why I still go into seizures whenever I see someone in a crimson red military uniform. Kind of the same feeling most fighters get when they see Fedor Emelianenko sizing them up from across the ring.
Equal parts intimidation and detached coldness, Emelianenko and Bison represent the unconquerable zeniths of their respective realms. Clinical in their approach and precise in every movement, they are heavyweights who are almost unnatural in their athleticism -- to the point that the countless lines of computer code that form M. Bison seem equally as likely an explanation for the aberration that is Fedor Emelianenko.
Sometimes, you just have to allow yourself to be impressed. And who better to impress us than Emelianenko? Of course, Bison runs a shadowy criminal network with an eye toward world domination, while we can only assume that Emelianenko doesn't plan on making us all his underlings. Not that he couldn't if he wanted to.
ESPN.com Mixed Martial Arts blog
