‘Catch These Hands’: The Black Boxer Trope in Fighting Video Games
Who needs a weapon when you are a weapon?
When I was young, I was a big fan of the original Killer Instinct games.
My favorite character was Glacius, a powerful being made of ice. You could turn his hands into weapons or melt down to a puddle, reemerging with an uppercut to opponents. Other characters in the game were the sword-wielding warrior monk Jago; Sabrewulf and Riptor, a werewolf and fighting raptor; Spinal, a skeletal soldier; and a brutal cybernetic soldier named Fulgore.
There was also TJ Combo. Though this boxing champion has one of the illest Ultra combos in fighting game history, he seemed a bit mundane compared to the other characters.
From Balrog in Street Fighter to Jax in Mortal Kombat, Black characters in the most popular fighting games are often boxers, or at least, their primary form of combat is punching. They also tend to be weaponless fighters battling against other characters who range from super-beasts to energy-wielders to deadly weaponry experts.
The Black boxer trope carries subtle conceptions about Black men as paradoxically both superhuman and inhuman. How else can Black men defeat…
