A Week In Comments

1. He was once a professional wrestler, and not that queer olympic stuff, the manly one with oiled guys and speedos. His in-ring persona was named ‘Macho’, which is appropriate, as it is the first thing one would think of when seeing him for the first time (the next is either intense jealousy, deep attraction, or a strange mixture of both).

2. Born on Sept. 3rd, 1943. That makes him 66 years old. Think about that the next time you decide to backtalk your grandpa. On that date, Italy officially surrendered to the Allied Powers in WWII. So he helped to win a war just by being born. All children born on this date henceforth were known as ‘Haggar Babies’ and are considered especially blessed.

3. Elected Mayor of Metro City, which is apparently the most lawless city on the face of the Earth. The streets are literally swarmed by an endless stream of gang members, with color-coded outfits seemingly denoting their rank and fighting prowess. The activity that constitutes fun is beating up a car with your bare fists. How did the few still-sane citizens come to the consensus that a former wrestler was the man to clean up their streets? And this isn’t like Jesse Ventura; it’s very obvious early on that a pair of pants and a leather strap around his monstrous torso are the only articles of clothing he owns. Running on a platform of piledrivers and suplexes usually isn’t enough to ensure victory. But I think its because…

4. All problems are solved with a personal punch to the face region. As the Mayor, Haggar must have access to the police and any other government employees he would need. When the call came that his daughter was kidnapped by the Mad Gear gang, he had options. But only one involved him busting out of his office and taking to the streets, punching out the first person who happened to be coming his direction. I bet no other thought even came to his mind.

(As an aside, how awesome would that conversation between Haggar and Cody have been? “Cody, my daughter, your girlfriend, has been kidnapped. I’m going to murder my way to her captors, you in?” “Yeah, and I know just the Guy to join us.” “Who?” “Guy.” “Which guy?”)

5. I know it doesn’t need to be said, but look at that mustache.

6. Haggar has appeared in Namco x Capcom as a playable character, and in the Card Fighter series as a card. I’ve never played either of these games, but you can’t tell me him being in the games made them worse.

7. In Final Fight: Streetwise, he was retired from politics and had a boat or something. This is bull and anyone who tells you this story is canon is doing a disgrace to a great man and you should beat them to within an inch of their life. So that means, as far as we know, he’s still Mayor. And really, would you vote for anyone else? You might call threatening to swing a metal pipe across the skull of anyone who disagrees with his administration as ‘needlessly violent’ and ‘unbecoming of the office of Mayor’, but I call it results.

8. When the robots take over our planet and the human resistance movement fights our new cybertronic overlords, no doubt they will develop the technology to create synthetic human skin to try and infiltrate us from withing. Asking potential recruits if they know the glory of Mike Haggar will become vital. Only someone with a soul can truly feel him in their heart.

9. Stupid robots.