Balrog grabbed hold of his fight money and threw it in the toilet, then realized that was a bad idea so now he's following the sewers while fighting people so he can get his fight money back.
This character's name is localized for the English release. For the purposes of this page, the names "Boxer" and "Balrog" are interchangeable.
Balrog, a dirty fighter employed by Shadaloo, is Remix's definitive big-damage character. Equipped with strong normals, an invulnerable movement tool, and the highest meterless damage output by far, Boxer forces the opponent to slow down and play by his rules, or risk losing it all on a blunder in neutral. Balrog's greatest strength, the highlight of his character, and debatably one of the best special moves in the entire game, Turn-Around Punch (abbreviated as TAP) is a negative-edge special move performed by holding all three kick or punch buttons. With its charge time drastically reduced from Ultra, Balrog can easily kill a character from full health if he happens to hit this move raw - and it doesn't hurt that it's safe on block, too. At full charge, Boxer's Turn-Around Punch deals a comical 560 damage flat, as well as crumpling on grounded hit and wallbouncing on air hit. Balrog can easily combo into and out of TAP, and will find himself two touching the entire cast the majority of the time, if not outright killing them on a single interaction.
Apart from TAP, Balrog's other defining special move is his Dash Straight, which has been reworked into a rekka-style special move with multiple followups, including a low, an overhead, and a launcher. In combination with this, Balrog can cancel any part of the rekka string into his movement special, Trick Spin, which is fully invulnerable for the duration and has its own litany of followups. These followups can be inputted out of rekka on hit, block or whiff, making Boxer a very difficult character to pin down for an extended period. However, his only true reversal without sacrificing TAP is the EX version of his Headbutt, the only move in his kit that remains a charge special. Volatile, explosive and extremely rewarding, Balrog is an all-or-nothing rushdown monster that's either losing hard or winning hard, with barely anything in-between.
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Weaknesses
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- Hysterically Good Damage: Balrog doesn't just have the highest damage output in the game, it's not even close. As of Beta 27, he remains the only character in the game with practical, realistic ToD routes on the entire cast, and average hit confirms will do upwards of 600-700 damage. Matchups against lower health characters, such as Akuma, Seth and Evil Ryu, are extremely dangerous for the opponent, as any mistake when close enough to Balrog very well may end the round on the spot, no questions asked. Above all else, this character's ludicrous damage output is his greatest strength, and arguably the main reason as to why he remains viable.
- Diverse Ground Movement: Between good forward and back dashes, a decent walk speed and his unique movement tools in Trick Spin and Shorthop, Balrog can move around the screen with ease, bullying the opponent into whatever screen positioning he wants.
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- VOLATILE: Balrog is extremely difficult to see consistent results with, due to his naturally explosive nature and lack of strong defensive options without charge. In matchups with vortex characters, Balrog often struggles to find his footing and fight back against their offensive tools, unless he gets a lucky break with his armored special moves or reversal.
- TAP: While TAP is extremely, extremely powerful, and the character's defining trait, it also has its fair amount of weaknesses. Due to being forced to hold all three buttons of a specific type, Balrog cannot tech or input throws while holding TAP, leaving him prone to extremely powerful mixups if the opponent plays around this limitation. Additionally, due to Trick Spin's input of 4KKK, it cannot be inputted if Balrog is using kick normals for TAP, which is generally preferred due to the fact his punch normals are much better in neutral. When holding TAP with kicks, however, Balrog has no low option of any kind, and without the use of throw, Balrog's mixups are extremely one-dimensional. This means that although Balrog does have a multitude of great neutral options, a chunk of them are locked behind TAP.
- Nonexistent Air Options: Balrog is a grounded character, through and through. He has zero air specials, and while his air-to-air and jump-in options are decent, they're extremely committal due to the fact he can't change his momentum once he leaves the ground. Combined with the extremely high reward universally that most characters get for anti-airs in Remix, jumping with Boxer is often an option you can't afford to use, unless you're extremely desperate.
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