Friday, October 22, 2010

Know Your Tekken, Part 5: Paul

Story
Paul Phoenix is a hotheaded American fighter out to prove himself as the world's best. Originally, he saw Kazuya as his main rival. As time went on, Kuma became his main rival, and Paul became closer to a joke character. To compare his character to those in Street Fighter, I'd say that in the early Tekken games, he was similar to Ken: he was truly determined to be a world-class fighter. Later, he becomes more like Dan: he's clearly not very strong (but thinks he is) and is obsessed with beating those who beat him previously, especially Kuma.

Fighting Style
Paul's fighting style is described as mixed martial arts, based on Judo. His style resembles that of any number of American martial arts movie characters. He looks like he'd be right at home in the Cobra Kai Dojo ("sweep the leg!") or fighting alongside Chuck Norris. In the actual games, Paul really doesn't have much going for him. He's not very fast and his combos are not the best, but he does have some fairly damaging moves. He's forced to carefully block the faster characters, then counter with his slower, more powerful strikes. Prior to Tekken 5, he had decent oki (wakeup mixup) options, but in later games, he's mostly missing that aspect of his offense. Paul is widely considered quite weak in Tekken 6.

His signature moves include:
  • Burning Death Fist: An unblockable, lunging straight punch.
  • Rapid Fire Phoenix Smasher: A damaging sweep, elbow, punch combo.

Likelihood of Appearance in SFxT/TxSF
Paul is one of only four characters to be in every Tekken game (along with Heihachi, Nina, and Yoshimitsu). He's basically guaranteed to be in Street Fighter X Tekken.

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