Armor King Returns as Next Tekken 8 DLC Character

Absolute fan favorite Tekken character Armor King is the next upcoming DLC character for Tekken 8 Season 2, as shown in the Fahkumram gameplay trailer revealed at the end of the Tekken 8 tournament at Combo Breaker 2025. He is scheduled to arrive in Autumn this year, some time after Fahkumram’s release in Tekken 8.

The hybrid wrestler and striker is an absolute classic in the franchise, having been around as an unlockable fighter since the first mainline entry.

Master of Lucha Libre

If Tekken 8 is your first foray into the series, then you may not be aware of this guy’s backstory. Armor King, or more accurately, Armor King II, is a professional wrestler in the same vein as King. But unlike King who wears a regular colored jaguar mask over his head, Armor King instead dons a gray one with heterochromic eyes — one red, and one green.

The reason that Armor King is called Armor King II is that he is actually the younger brother of the Armor King I. The elder Armor King died at the hands of Craig Marduk in the events of Tekken 5, and so his younger brother put on the mask and sought revenge thereafter. Incidentally, the King that we see in Tekken 8 is also called King II, but instead of being a sibling, he is the student and protegé of Armor King I. Yes, it’s as confusing as you think it is. Just Tekken things.

Anyway, Armor King’s fighting style mixes professional wrestling and traditional striking arts. This contrasts him somewhat to King, whose fighting style leans more heavily on throws and grappling.

The Duality of Armor King

Armor King does still have a great throw game, mind you, with powerful command throws like Giant Swing (f,hcf+1), Hades Drop (qcb+1+2), and Shining Wizard (WR2+4) to mix the opponent up with. But he also has excellent whiff punishment thanks to Dark Upper (cd2), which functions kind of like a traditional Mishima style Electric Wind God Fist (cd:2) — albeit without the frame advantage on block that comes with the EWGF input.

Because he has a crouch dash input, this also means that Armor King can do wavedash mixups. Although he doesn’t have a power low like Kazuya’s Hell Sweep (cd4,1), he has access to a knockdown mid in Brawler Kick (f,f+4) coming out of a wavedash — which punishes lazy players that crouch against his throw mixups rather than sidestep. Should they then realize their mistakes and start sidestepping, Armor King’s wavedash realigns him with his opponent as they move laterally, which allows him to “track” them with his throws.

In Tekken 8, he may not even have to do this much considering how much King’s command throws track in Season 2. I fully expect him to get the same treatment in this game, unless the balance team at Bandai Namco Entertainment have actually learned their lessons. Honestly, even if Armor King’s throws don’t have any tracking off the bat, who’s to say they won’t when he’s in Heat?

But enough about his throws — the real appeal of playing Armor King is in his range and pokes. In Tekken 7, he was excellent from range 2-3, thanks to the long reach of his pokes like Minced Liver (d/f+1), his generic d+4, the first hit of Killer PK Combo (d/b+2), and more. He didn’t really snowball from landing those pokes, though, as most of his pokes were actually slightly negative on hit.

Rather, he frustrates his opponent this way into making mistakes, which he then capitalizes on with his whiff punishment tools like the aforementioned Dark Upper and Dark Elbow Hook (f+2,1). And if the opponent proves themself solid defensively, that’s when the wavedash throw mixups come in.

“I Lie, I Cheat, I Steal”

While Armor King may not be a total 50/50 machine like King is, he still has plenty of tricks up his sleeve. He has access to some great unblockable moves and setups involving those moves, which are particularly useful in wakeup situations. Burning Knuckle (hold u/f+1+2) is crazy good after a specific move in a juggle combo, especially against opponents that like to get up right away.

Poison Mist (cd1+2) is another great unblockable option, as it guarantees Shoulder Impact (f+2+4) if it hits on the later active frames. Shoulder Impact was a wall splatting mid in Tekken 7, so if Bandai Namco keep this interaction, getting up against Armor King at the wall will be a very risky thing to do.

Selling It Twice

As a long time Tekken fan, I’m excited for Armor King’s comeback as anyone else — but I can’t help but notice that Bandai Namco seem to be selling us existing characters that should have already been included in the Tekken 8 cast by default. Season 2 is especially guilty of this, considering that Anna, Fahkumram, and Armor King were already in the previous game. Season 1 was not much better either, since it had Eddy, Lidia, and Heihachi before Final Fantasy XVI’s Clive Rosfield dropped at the end of the year.

I’d much rather have original characters in each DLC slot, or at least characters that we haven’t seen in many years like Bruce Irvin or Ancient Ogre. I certainly understand the need for them to keep revenue up in order to maintain the servers, of course, but given the devs’ questionable business practices from last year, I don’t really feel like giving them the benefit of the doubt.

At least Armor King is universally loved by the fanbase, so it’s hard to imagine that the community won’t appreciate him as DLC. That’s how he was in Tekken 7, anyway, so it’s not like this is anything surprising.