On March 17 Street Fighter 6 is getting a new DLC character, the pro wrestling-inspired Alex, and All Elite Wrestling's own Kenny Omega is the man behind the motion capture. At IGN Fan Fest 2026, he explained how the opportunity to do the motion capture actually came out of a simple misunderstanding.
"When the news broke and they told me, we signed the NDAs and we know who the characters are and Alex will, in fact, be one of them. And they said, for you being such a good sport, it'd be cool if we, you know, put a move of yours in, maybe one or two or a taunt or something," Omega told IGN.
"I had said, 'wow, that would be great. I just don't know when I could fit that into my schedule to do the mocap for it.' And they'd said, 'oh, wait, you do the mocap for it?' I said, 'yeah, is that what you were talking about or no?' They said, 'oh my, if you would do the mocap for it, that would be awesome.' And so a misunderstanding on my part is what led to me actually going to the studio and doing a slew of mocap for the character. If there was ever a better time to be stupid, that was one of them, because it worked out in my favor completely to not understand what they were talking about at that moment. So because of that one discussion, I got invited back to the next year's Tokyo Game Show. And then before doing the game show, I stopped over at Osaka, where they do the mocap for Capcom. And we hammered it out in one day. It was a grueling 10 or 11 hour shoot. I remember losing like eight or nine pounds of water weight, but it was so worth it and so fun."
He also revealed that the developers were open to suggestions and he can see how his ideas were incorporated into the final game animations, and that wrestling without an audience wasn't as alien of an experience as people might expect.
"I think because of COVID, I got used to wrestling and performing in front of no one. It reminded me of kind of being back into an empty arena and just having cameras all around me, but there's no sound. There's no adulation. There's no people. I see staff here and there, but it brought back memories of the COVID era for sure."
Alex first appeared in 1997 Street Fighter III: New Generation in arcades. Early concept art shows the professional wrestler character was initially positioned as the new face of the franchise. In Street Fighter 6, his super moves include Raging Spear, Sledgecross Hammer, and The Final Prison. He also has an alternate level 2 super called the Omega Wing Buster, which is a sequence of moves inspired by Kenny Omega's own trio of signature moves, including the V-Trigger, Snap Dragon Suplex, and of course, the One Winged Angel.
This is just the latest news from IGN's Fan Fest 2026, check the schedule to see what else is coming and to keep up to date on all the latest from the worlds of entertainment and games.
Rachel Weber is the Head of Editorial Development at IGN and an elder millennial. She's been a professional nerd since 2006 when she got her start on Official PlayStation Magazine in the UK, and has since worked for GamesIndustry.Biz, Rolling Stone and GamesRadar. She loves horror, horror movies, horror games, Red Dead Redemption 2, and her Love and Deepspace boyfriends.
📰 Original Source:IGN
✍️ Author: Rachel Weber
