This Full House reboot is weird!
Country of Origin: Thailand
Fighting Style: Muay Thai
Sagat, "the Emperor of Muay Thai," was the boss of the original Street Fighter game, the one where Ryu was a redhead in slippers. Kickboxing movies were experiencinga surge in popularity when the game was being designed, which is why the final threat was given that style. He was brought back in Street Fighter II to fit the storytelling trope of a defeated rival's surprise reappearance; the bosses weren't playable in the first version of SFII, and so didn't appear on the character select screen; since every other character other than Ryu and Ken was new, no one would be expecting a returning villain.
There is, in real life, a Muay Thai kickboxer who fought under the name "Sagat Petchyindee," and who claims he was the inspiration for Street Fighter's Sagat. Despite the fact that he wasn't tall, wasn't bald, and
had two eyes. Surely this claim has nothing to do with him being bad with his money and looking for a windfall. Capcom, for their part, has never commented on it. But if you remember M. Bison's connection to a comic character, you may like to learn that the semi-biographical 1970s manga Karate Master had a character named Reiba, a bald, eyepatched Muay Thai fighter who served as a sort of "final boss" for an arc and who carried the epithet "the Dark Lord of Muay Thai." No need to copy an obscure human when an obscure comic character will do!
Jada loves giving their Street Fighters an alternate head. Or, I don't know, maybe they hate it and just do it out of a sense of obligation, I can't read their minds. The point is, they consistently give their Street Fighters an alternate head, and that's just as true for Sagat as it is for everyone else. His normal head is a bit frowny, because he never seems like a happy type of guy, while the second head is even angrier than that, with his lip pulled up to allow him to growl at his opponent.
Street Fighter 1 didn't have great graphics, so it followed the '80s videogame convention of helping identify the boss by
making him simply be bigger than everyone else (cf. King Koopa, Gannondorf, many more). But unlike beat'em-ups, where a sprite being large is simply a signifier, Sagat is legitimately a giant - he's officially 7'5", while this figure is verging on 7½". He's so big, he has to be sold in special packaging! (Well, technically he probably doesn't, they could have just posed him to fit inside the box, but he costs more than all the previous series did, so picky fans like us probably wouldn't have been okay paying the increased price if he was just in a normal box. Same goes for Blanka.)
The SOTA and Jada SF lines have never really been
very integrateable, but that's really underscored with Sagat. SOTA's Sagat was absolutely ripped, and the wrappings around his wrists and ankles looked like real cloth; by comparison, Jada's is almost cartoony, with smooth lines in the anatomy and wraps that are basically just white bands. Oh, they do have a texture, Jada's sculptors do that very nicely, even on "simple" figures like this (you'll find it present on his trunks as well), it's just a more subtle kind, matching the style the line is aiming for. The jagged scar on his chest - a souvenir from his first loss to Ryu - is painted darker than the rest of the skin, as are the smaller ones on his neck and scalp.
Despite the toy's size, there have been no changes
made to the articulation - nothing added because there's more free space, nothing taken away in the name of stability. Just like everyone else, he has swivel/hinge ankles, swivel shins, double-hinged knees, swivel thighs, balljoint hips, a balljoint waist, balljointed chest, swivel/hinged wrists, double-hinged elbows, swivel biceps, swivel/hinge shoulders, pectoral hinges, balljointed neck, and barbell head. Wait, I was wrong: he does have something new! Toes! For some reason they also gave him hinged toes. Do they help him kick better? Or knee people in the face better? Maybe, I don't know! But he can balance securely just on the toes, which is impressive.
Because the Sagat sprite was so much taller than Player 1, his punches and kicks would logically go right over them.
The game's planner, Hiroshi Matsumoto, decided to give the character a fireball that could visibly strike the player, and the Tiger Shot was born. (Since only the boss having this kind of attack was deemed unfair, it was also then given to Ken and Ryu, a decision that changed the gaming world.) Sagat gets the fancier fireball that was later also given to Akuma, with the multi-colored front and the extra-pointy rear, and since it has to be launched from his increased height, the clear stand that holds it up is taller than average.
The looming tiger to Ryu's blatant dragon, Sagat was only a villain in Street Fighter II: in 1 he was just the strongest fighter Ryu wanted to prove himself against, and by the time he came back in 4 he'd gotten past his desire for revenge and regained his self-respect, to the point where he denied Bison's invitation when the diictator re-formed Shadaloo. He even became something of a mentor to Ryu as the years went by, but since Street Fighter II has outsold every other incarnation, his story remains stuck in the past in most people's minds. We'd like this figure more if it cost the same as the others, but some things don't work the same way in 2025 that they did in 2005.
-- 03/29/26
Were you aware Sagat became a good guy? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.
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