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maxwell-grant · 2 years

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SF Character Overview: Adon, Muay Thai Prince

(Art by Tovio Rogers)

So Street Fighter’s been making the rounds recently following the announcement of Street Fighter 6 and the many, many new developments it’s bringing to the series, and because it’s circling my brain more so than usual again, I figured it’d use some time to bring back these posts and put those thoughts to something. Since it’s obvious that, even with the roster leaks, SF6 is gonna have more characters on the way, I assume there’s gonna be a lot of speculation over the following months as to which characters are going to be brought back. So I figured going over some of them, do a little retrospective of my own.

With that said, let’s talk about the Jaguar King Shit of Thai Mountain, Adon

Adon's obnoxious fighting style and biting jackass personality doesn't seem to make him an especially popular character and boo-hoo to that, he rules. He rules, and he has to be in Street Fighter 6 if only because, if SF6's been selling itself so strongly as taking the franchise to the future, then, where is the future of Muay Thai heading?

Now, yes, I do have a considerable soft spot for the guy, as the other Muay Thai fighter in the franchise (and Sagat being my favorite character does go a long way too), also helped by the fact that, unlike Sagat, Adon doesn't use fireballs and special energy techniques, he actually does fight like a (highly exaggerated) Muay Thai fighter, focused on aggressive knee strikes and cutting elbows. The difference between the two was further accentuated not just in their designs, but fighting styles that become symmetrical through contrast.

Sagat stands tall and precise, with his hands and feet apart in a more proper Muay Thai stance. Adon leans back in exaggerated and impractical fashion, a knee above ground and his hands poised like claws. Sagat is large and powerful, with his fastest attacks being leaping knee strikes, where as Adon is smaller and limber and is constantly hopping across the screen. Sagat holds his ground with long-ranged kicks and fireballs, Adon hauls his whole body with every special attack he has. Sagat is a mountain, Adon is a dagger. In Street Fighter’s Muay Thai world, Sagat was the mighty king of tradition, and Adon is the cunning prince spearheading the revolution to oust him.

As a character, Adon sits in a pretty unique role as the bonafide heel of Street Fighter. He’s this contemptible shithead who never has anything nice to say to anyone, who boasts more grandiose arrogance in a handful of lines than in most characters’ entire quote repertoire. He’s brutal and mean and hateful in a way even most of the actual villains aren’t, and with the way he talks about being a god, you’d almost mistake him for a SNK boss. And he's far from a joke, he’s repeteadly established to be indeed a very strong fighter. Not strong enough to fully surpass Sagat (at least not yet), but strong enough to beat him and take his reign as the Muay Thai champion, strong enough to pose a challenge to most fighters.

But the thing about Adon is that he’s not a villain, he’s a heel. And the “why" he isn’t a villain is interesting, because it isn’t born from any sort of established kindness. Most of the time, he has no stake or goal other than beating Sagat, which he did at least once and eventually decided that Sagat was soft and pathetic and not worthy of his attention, or chasing after the Satsui no Hadou in the Alpha series, which he no longer seems to be doing circa IV (his Rival Battle with Sagat doesn’t seem to refer to it in it’s JPN dialogue, and although he claims Gouken’s ability to extinguish it is something he must nullify, he explicitly calls the Satsui no Hadou pathetic nonsense if you beat Akuma and Evil Ryu with him).

You could even argue Adon has, or at least used to have, a higher moral ground than Sagat, because he at least never threw his lot with Shadaloo. Now, obviously the circumstances between the two were different, and considering Adon’s defined in the Alpha series by his pursuit of the Dark Hadou for it’s power, it’s not a stretch to argue that Adon could join Shadaloo if Bison had approached him at a lower point, or had just made a better offer. But the thing is, the one time we see Bison approach him, he rebuffs it (and we know this ending took place canonically, possibly even before Adon had beaten Sagat proper). And not just in the usual way he rebuffs everyone on the basis of them being weaker than him, no, he actually specifically tells Bison to piss off for being a drug lord, and Bison, who has any number of ways to brainwash or force fighters to work for him if he feels like it, actually backed off, which at minimum speaks something about Adon’s strength and willpower, if Bison respected him enough to approach him personally and actually fuck off when Adon told him to. Not many fighters can at all claim to have done that.

The druglord part is, interesting, to note as the main sticking point that gets Adon to refuse the deal. He wasn’t ostensibly any different at this point in the series than he became later (even as he was made more aggressive), it wouldn’t seem uncharacteristic for a guy like him to just accept Bison’s offer while reaping the benefits of his new life as Muay Thai Emperor. But he doesn’t do that. If nothing else, this gets me more curious to learn more about Adon’s past or life outside of the ring and his vendettas.

An interesting thing about Adon that tends to be overlooked is that, while he is an extremely egotistical character to put it mildly, he’s also highly, highly devoted to his fighting art in a way that even other characters aren’t. Adon places himself on the ultimate pedestal, repeteadly calling himself an untouchable god, but he seems to place Muay Thai on an equal pedestal, sometimes even higher. Unlike Sagat, he performs a wai kru before matches, and he’s always worn his kruangs to the ring.

Some of his dialogue almost reads like that of a religious fanatic, and even his mad chase for the Satsui no Hadou in the Alpha series reads less like a villain’s quest for power, and more like he’s on a desperate mission to prove that there is no way, no how, that Muay Thai could possibly be inferior to anything, which speaks to the massive ego wound he has about the time where it was proven inferior to something.

"The name of the holy "Muay Thai" doesn't allow me to lose."

"Take a good look! I am the new god of Muay Thai!"

"The one who once defiled Muay Thai can't beat me!"

"Vulnerability is a sin by itself! I must cleanse you with this fist of God!!"

(referring to Akuma) "That ultimate barrage attack... That's how I will identify him! Then, I'll teach him that Muay Thai is truly invincible!"

(talking to Rose) "Ruin and destruction, right? I know full well what it is! But Muay Thai's power is far beyond your comprehension!"

(after defeating Oni) "No deity is a match for the god of Muay Thai!"

"Muay Thai is the single most powerful art on the face of the planet!"

In fact, most tellingly, here’s what he has to say to Ryu, if you beat him in SSFIV:

"Witness the glorious return of Muay Thai to its rightful place upon the throne!"

It would be easy for Adon to be just a power-hungry jackal who thirsts for the Dark Hadou because he only wants more power. Vut in the games, Adon never goes that far, in fact, if you comb through his dialogue, he doesn’t actually show any interest in the Satsui no Hadou in and of itself, he doesn’t even seem to know what it is. He specifically wants to learn Akuma’s Shun Goku Satsu to improve his Muay Thai style, and I mean, it’s the Shun Goku Satsu, the strongest fighting technique in-universe. The whole reason he learned of it in the first place is because Akuma used it to kill a fighter he was supposed to go up against. If that’s something he has to watch out for then, it’s just plain common sense to want to learn it, it if he’s to maintain Muay Thai’s superiority instead of otherwise letting rival martial artists possess what is basically a nuke (even if he obviously has no idea how it actually works). But besides that win quote above, he pretty much never shows any beef with Ryu. I mean, didn’t Ryu beat him, too? Why is it Sagat that Adon has such a (particularly) deathly hatred for?

Is he just a hypocrite? Well, yes, he is, but that’s not all of it. It’s not just because Sagat failed him. It’s because Sagat failed Muay Thai. Adon’s the farthest thing from what you would associate the word “honorable” with, but in a way, everything he’s doing is not just for the sake of his ego, but also has to do with honor, the honor of Muay Thai that Sagat let down and that he now intensely wants to restore. Is he that different from Sagat, who was blinded by his wound pride and honor and ultimately took such a long time to rediscover it on positive terms?

It’s repeteadly emphasized that Adon’s real grudge with Sagat is that he feels as if Muay Thai was humiliated beyond recovery by his loss. Like Sagat, Adon grew up poor and struggled his way out of poverty by taking on Muay Thai and embracing a mindset that placed power over everything. Sagat took on Adon as an apprentice after recognizing in him the same intense fighting spirit he had, and instilled on him the mindset that Muay Thai was the strongest martial art, and that strength was everything. Is it that much of a stretch then, that to Adon, Muay Thai became everything, and he took a crumbling dishonor to it so poorly?

It’s not at all unbelievable that Sagat and Adon would adhere so strongly to this mindset, considering not just their origins as characters, but also the place Muay Thai occupies culturally. The thing about Adon is that, while he’s doing most things largely for the wrong reasons, he isn’t wrong about one thing: Sagat did disgrace Muay Thai. Not just by joining Shadaloo (even if he canonically never did anything while on it but be Bison’s sparring partner and bodyguard), but by losing the way he did. Really, losing at all with so much on the line.

Each and every day, children run the dusty, winding country roads of Thailand with dreams of carrying that culture through to the next generation. To one day join the pantheon of Thailand’s greatest fighters makes their blood, sweat, and tears necessary currency.

Like thousands of aspiring fighters living in modest means in the Southeast Asian country, providing their family with a viable way of escaping poverty is the fuel to keep running. It is the reason to return to the gym day after day, taking shot after shot. For many, it is the only way to attain a better life.

The trainers – most of who are revered as leaders in many towns and villages – will tell you that Muay Thai is simply in the blood. Although regarded as Thailand’s national sport, it is more than just competition.

It is, for many of the country’s inhabitants, a way of life. The fabric of their people, and a constant reminder of the warrior spirit which runs through each and every Thai’s veins - History of Muay Thai

Prisoners with good behavior can even fight Muay Thai in order to reduce their prison sentences, under the idea that they can bring honor and fame to Thailand by doing so. Even though I’ve known about this for years, the relevance of this information actually didn’t particularly click with me until I’ve had a conversation with my teacher recently, about building up resistance by getting punched in the gut, and he remarked to me that fighters in Thailand spend a lot more time and effort training their guts to withstand impact than most martial artists or practicioners of Muay Thai outside of Thailand, because there, it is considered a source of shame to be knocked out by a non-liver gut punch, because it means you weren’t trained properly to take it (that’s what he tells me based on his own trips to fighting circuits in Thailand, although if anyone actually from Thailand knows better and wants to correct me, feel free to do so, I’d love to know more)

Now, consider what happened to Sagat. Sagat who was, not just the undisputed emperor of Muay Thai, but the strongest fighter in the entire world as far as he, Adon and anyone else at the time were concerned, who was so starved for proper opponents that he arranged a tournament just so people across the entire world could show up to take shots at him, and who still managed to basically remain untouched. Sagat, who staked not just his entire reputation and career, but also that of the entire martial art, and therefore the reputation of his country that he’d been carrying on his prideful shoulders, on this stunt.

And Sagat, who was suddenly knocked out and nearly killed by some random nameless foreigner, basically just a kid with a karate gi, who just showed up and, even while pretty much losing the fight proper, still managed to knock out and nearly kill Sagat with a cheap shot last-second blow that tore him open from gut to pectoral. Sagat who, following this loss, basically fucked off and dissappeared. And Sagat who reappeared months later, as the right-hand of a druglord and dictator, the once national hero hanging out with terrorists. Is it that surprising that Adon grew to detest him so much to the point of dedicating so much of his life to breaking free from his shadow and taking the reign for himself?

I find it more interesting that Adon isn’t intended to be likeable or sympathetic, and good thing too, the series needs more heels, especially heels that aren’t outright villains, and not every understudy in the franchise needs to be a good guy either or a pure villain. Adon’s a small, petty jackass who set out to surpass the former Grand Jackass following his fall from grace, and basically succeeded. I really hope they bring him back for SF6 or at least show us what he’s been up to, where has his journey led him following his success in becoming Emperor of Muay Thai.

Is he still pursuing grander and darker powers after all, still hopelessly bound by his and Sagat’s failure and his devotion to restoring Muay Thai’s honor? Has he succeded in attaining said powers at a cost to his own soul? Will he show up to provide us with the failed and tragic contrast of Sagat’s own quest? Or, assuming Sagat has fallen (as his SFV story seems to hint at), will he show up to rub his failure in or even, perhaps, fight his former master again in a climactic duel?

...Or is he still just gonna keep kicking around offscreen as the Grand God King Emperor Lord of Muay Thai, not bothering to join stupid Street Fighter tournaments, and has completely forgotten about those and the Dark Hadous and Sagats or whatever, because those are stupid dumb things only stupid dumb losers care about and he’s too busy rebuilding the kingdom to care? Only time will tell.

(Art by Matias Bergara)

#street fighter #fighting games #sf6 #street fighter alpha #adon #sagat #muay thai #capcom #street fighter 6 #street fighter iv #fgc #martial arts

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