Paul Phoenix

Paul Phoenix is a Judo expert and a good friend of the Law family. His mixture of karate and judo styles have achieved legendary status, but a seemingly minor complication always arises that prevents him from winning the tournament, as in the case when a traffic jam prevents his confrontation with his rival, Kazuya Mishima, at the end of the second Iron Fist tournament.

In common with many Tekken characters, Paul's moveset includes flamboyant fictional attacks, mixed with more realistic-looking techniques. While his strike-heavy style bears little in common with grapple-based modern judo, early judo did in fact include striking attacks, based as it was on various forms of jujutsu. In Tekken, Paul's sub-boss was Kuma, a bear supposedly trained by Heihachi Mishima; this was explained by Paul having witnessed as a child a martial artist called Willie Williams fighting a bear. Willie Williams is a real-life kyokushin karateka, who can indeed be seen fighting a bear in a sequence filmed as part of a documentary about Kyokushin Karate, although curiously the bear in question seems reluctant to retaliate using its full strength.

Paul went undefeated during The King of Iron Fist Tournament 3, even managing to beat Ogre. He left soon afterwards, claiming himself to be the winner. However, Ogre evolved into True Ogre and the tournament continued after his departure. Having realized this only sometime afterwards, Paul became frustrated and angry. Few believed him when he told everyone that he was the true winner of The King of Iron Fist Tournament 3. After a short while, he soon turned to alcohol. Paul then heard an announcement for The King of Iron Fist Tournament 4. Paul trained vigorously and entered the tournament to prove himself once more.

Rolling through his opponents one-by-one, Paul felt excited at the prospects of facing Kazuya Mishima, whom he had not faced in over 20 years. However, he once again found Kuma standing in his way. His mind distracted, Paul did not take Kuma seriously at first, and by the time he realized his mistake, he was quickly overwhelmed by the bear and defeated. His loss to Kuma shamed Paul greatly, and he realized he had strayed from the path of a true martial artist and started his training all over again. When the fifth tournament was announced, Paul entered to prove that he is, literally, "the toughest fighter in the universe".

Paul Phoenix's rematch with Kuma was fierce, and though victorious, he was utterly exhausted, leaving him unable to continue the King of Iron Fist Tournament 5. Unable to collect any prize money from the last tournament, Paul, who was already burdened by his mountain of debt, learns that a new King of Iron Fist Tournament will be held soon. Believing that if he won the tournament, he could finally say goodbye to his loan troubles, Paul deeply thought about ways to increase his chances of winning—participating on his own was out of the question. If he could assemble a team with someone, his chances of winning the prize money would greatly increase. And so he went over his plan with his best friend Marshall Law - but thinking a three-man team was better than two, renowned boxer Steve Fox caught his attention.