Why were Street Fighter's boss names swapped outside Japan?

In Japan, the three bosses of Street Fighter II (1991) are these men. The boxer is M. Bison, the M standing for Mike: an open parody of Mike Tyson, likeness included. The masked Spanish claw fighter is Balrog, a name director Akira Nishitani has said was chosen because it sounded strong. The dictator in the red uniform, the final boss, is Vega, named for the star. Then the game went overseas, and the North American branch raised two problems at once.

Problem one was legal: a boxer character named Mike Bison, drawn to resemble the most famous boxer alive, read as a likeness lawsuit waiting to happen. Problem two was theatrical: Vega, a star's pretty name, did not sound threatening enough for the final boss in the American market, while it suited the elegant Spanish fighter perfectly. The name graphics were already made, so Capcom did the efficient thing: it rotated the three names. Overseas, the boxer became Balrog, the claw fighter became Vega, and the dictator became M. Bison, an M whose meaning Capcom has never explained, calling it part of the character's mystery.

The shuffle was never undone, so the series has run with two name maps for over thirty years, and Japanese media still uses the originals. Two endings to the story are documented. In 2019, Mike Tyson was finally asked about his supposed likeness: he had never heard of the character, and said he was honored by the impersonation. And Street Fighter 6 wrote the confusion into canon, with Vega explaining that the names are aliases and smokescreens the Shadaloo kings used to protect their identities. The lawsuit that never happened became lore.