No, you can’t pick a Final Fight with Thrasher Damnd
Who is Thrasher Damnd, the menacing gang leader that we encounter in Street Fighter 6‘s World Tour mode? He looks just like any other upstanding citizen in this strangely aggressive fighting arena of a city, but Damnd is quite the historied veteran when it comes to the fighting game genre.
Damnd first showed up in the Final Fight series, where he acted as the boss of the first stage. Don’t let all the muscle fool you. This man was the top intelligence guy of the Mad Gear Gang, and his original claim to fame was the kidnapping of the daughter of Metro City’s Mayor Haggar. Damnd ended up getting his ass kicked by the heroes of Final Fight, but not before successfully moving the Mayor’s daughter to another cast— err, location.
He’s also the first boss in Mighty Final Fight, a game where he asks players some questions and can take damage depending on their answers. Not so tough, huh?
In Street Fighter 6‘s World Tour mode, he debuts during chapter 4-1 to give players some trouble over a fancy bag. Luckily, he’s pretty cool about it. Outside of the World Tour Mode, players can find Damnd watching fights on the Metro City Downtown and Macho City stages. He also has a background cameo in other Capcom scrappers, such as Street Fighter Alpha 2. Damnd would return to the ring, this time as a playable character, in the 1999 Japan-only Sega Saturn release, Final Fight Revenge.
Fun fact: his actual name is just “Damnd”. Capcom changed his name to “Thrasher” in the Western release. Why? Because “Damnd” was apparently too harsh of a name for the seemingly soft gaming corps of the late-’80s. In SF6, however, he shows up as “Thrasher Damnd”. Weird choice, but we like that Capcom is maintaining the trend it started when they chose the name Resident Evil 7: Biohazard.
Despite being set in Metro City itself, Street Fighter 6 is surprisingly light on Final Fight characters when it comes to its main roster. Will we ever get to play as Damnd in SF6? It might all boil down to how fans of the series react to his neat little cameo.
