The return of a wrestling icon in Fatal Fury City of Wolves

Yesterday the blog looked at some concept art from Garou Mark of the Wolves (1999) thanks to some scans that my friend Zero shared with me. We saw how some character designs evolved. Some characters were dropped, and some ended up being the blueprints for brawlers that would turn up in the King of Fighters series. One of the returning faces in the Garou 2 / Fatal Fury City of Wolves was a masked wrestler that went by the name of Griffon Mask / Tizoc. He was easily one of my favorite pro wrestling characters in a video game. He captured the essence of lucha libre better than 90% of the masked wrestlers in any other title.

There were layers to his design that were important to fans of the sport. Even if you knew nothing about pro wrestling you could tell he was an interesting character, with a unique move set, and his own personal reason for fighting. For die-hard fans of lucha libre his design, and inclusion was profound. There were a lot of differences between the pro wrestling featured in the USA, and in Mexico. I’m going to give you a light overview today, but if you want a deep dive I wrote a comprehensive history of lucha libre on the blog many years ago. Wrestling in Mexico is called lucha libre, literally “free fight” or “freestyle fighting.” Not every luchador or wrestler wore a mask. That was a misnomer. A masked wrestler in Mexico was called an enmascarado.

The good guys were referred to as técnicos, literally technical wrestlers. They obeyed the rules of the sport, and practiced good sportsmanship. The villains were called rudos, literally rude, rough, or rugged fighters. They were expected to use dirty tactics, and cheat at every opportunity. It was up to the técnico to beat them fair, and square. It was a challenge never to stoop to their level. There were both good guy, and bad guy enmascarados. They represented a literal battle between good, and evil. In the King of Fighters universe Griffon Mask was among the best of the técnicos. He had no intention of entering the KOF tournament but was recruited by a boxer named Vanessa. Griffon was on the opposite end of the spectrum of Raiden, the heel, or evil masked wrestler that appeared in the original Fatal Fury from 1991. Raiden was based on Leon White aka Big Van Vader. Mr. White (R.I.P) was hugely popular in Japan in the ‘80s, and ‘90s. He influenced the creation of Raiden, as well as Sheep the Royal / Alexander the Grater from the Muscle Bomber / Saturday Night Slam Masters (1993) series by Capcom.

Griffon Mask was the definition of a babyface, or face for short. These were the good guys. He was a noble wrestler, and he fought for all the right reasons. He was actually a mentor to young poor kids, and using his winnings to help orphans. This was a trait shared by King from the Tekken (1994) series. The stories of masked wrestlers fighting for orphans was based on the true story of Fray Tormenta (Friar Storm). He was a monk that would wrestle while masked in order to raise money for the orphanage he ran. His legend changed the perception that Japanese fans had of masked wrestling. He would inspire the creation of some great fighters. The teams at Namco, and SNK seemed to have a profound respect for the sport. By comparison I was not happy with how the developer at Capcom took away the elements of lucha libre, and replaced them with cooking gimmicks for El Fuerte in Street Fighter IV (2008).

In the King of Fighters XIV (2016) Team Mexico featured a new character. Joining fellow pro wrestler Ramon, and Angel was a new enmascarado named King of Dinosaurs. This guy had a similar build, and move set to Griffon Mask. He was however a rudo. Ramon, Angel, and several other competitors in the tournament knew he was actually Griffon but played along in order to preserve “kayfabe” or keep audiences from discovering the truth. The reason for his change in demeanor was because he had been beaten by a young boxer named Nelson. In order to get even he was willing to fight dirty in the tournament. He didn’t want to let any of his fans down so he created a new persona, and mask by extension. I had written about Nelson, the boxing phenom with vitiligo previously on the blog.

I’m glad that Griffon was back to his good guy identity. I wondered if Vanessa had something to do with this, or if it would be addressed during the story mode. I was eager to see if he was going to have a new rival in Fatal Fury the City of Wolves. It would be great if Raiden, or a new rudo debuted in the sequel. What do you think of this character? Were you ever a fan of pro wrestling, or lucha libre? I’d like to hear about it on the comments section. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!