Fahkumram Revealed as Next Tekken 8 Season 2 DLC Character

Rejoice, muay thai practitioners and fans that also happen to play Tekken 8 — Tekken 7 original character Fahkumram has been announced by Bandai Namco Entertainment as the second DLC character for Season 2 after Anna. The imposing, intimidating Thai fighter was revealed earlier today at Evo Japan 2025, via a teaser trailer that curiously didn’t showcase any of his gameplay at all.

Instead, the trailer itself was more about additional Season 2 content outside of Fahkumram, such as extra costumes and cosmetics, as well as a Pac-Man themed stage in line with the legendary video game character’s 45th anniversary. Some time after the Fahkumram reveal, though, Bandai Namco also posted on their official website about further balance changes coming to Season 2, which I’ll talk about later in this article.

Lightning Strikes Twice

For those that weren’t around in Tekken 7 Season 3, Fahkumram will probably be a stranger to you. As I mentioned, he is a muay thai fighter — the fourth overall in the franchise after Bruce, Bryan (some of his moves are from muay thai), and Josie. He is a 6-foot-7 (200cm) beast of a man weighing what seems like 300 pounds (136kg) in pure muscle, and he looks like he could murder anyone with a flick of his wrist.

Touted as a prodigy in the world of muay thai, Fahkumram was seen as a future muay thai world champion even at a young age. But when he was struck by lightning at 12 years old, he might have wondered if his life would get cut short before he even got a chance to rise to the top. Miraculously, he survived the incident after being on the brink of death for days, eventually developing the absolutely hulking physique he has today.

Though his journey to becoming the best muay thai fighter in the world was delayed for several years, he achieved the feat at the age of 18. Once he was 24, though, he was approached by unscrupulous men who offered him a large amount of money in exchange for losing his next muay thai match on purpose. An honorable fighter through and through, he refused to comply, and won his match anyway.

The men that threatened him attacked Fahkumram thereafter, but because he was so strong, he managed to fight off and even kill some of the assassins. Unfortunately, he was arrested by the police on the spot — and though he tried to assert that he was only defending himself, the officers in question were actually just the same people that attacked him, only now disguised as policemen.

His family, composed of a wife and daughter, were then abducted by the gang in order to gain more leverage over him. Fahkumram was therefore left with no choice but to go along with their schemes, which included illegal underground fights — some of which were even against wild animals like tigers.

Tekken 8 Before Tekken 8

Enough about Fahkumram’s backstory, though — I know you’re wondering about how he might actually play in Tekken 8. Well, I say Tekken 8, but in reality we already know how his gameplay is going to be like in this game. This is because he was practically already a Tekken 8 character in Tekken 7 when he debuted, with mechanics that are now much more common in the latest title.

Extremely disjointed range on his pokes and power mids, access to oppressive mid-low mixups that either leave him at an advantage on block or knock down for wakeup shenanigans, guard breaks at the wall — you name it, Fahkumram had it in Tekken 7. And given the absolutely awful state of Tekken 8’s balance and design right now, you can imagine how obnoxious he’s going to be if he retains even some of these things once he arrives this summer.

Seriously, this guy was a problem when he debuted in Tekken 7. Leroy before him already broke the game in the same season that Fahkumram released, and he only made the problem even worse from there. He was a godlike character that warped Tekken 7’s balance, before he was finally punished for his crimes in the Season 4 balance patch — in one of the biggest sets of nerfs for any Tekken character in history.

But it’s a new game and a fresh start for the tragic world champion, which means he might just get back to his former busted glory if the devs aren’t careful. And given their unprofessional attitude towards criticism about the balance over the last few months, I personally don’t trust them to know what’s fair and what isn’t if it hit them in their faces.

I’m sure the community shares my opinion on this, as evidenced by the video above of the mild reaction to the reveal at Evo Japan. No one is mad anymore at this point — we’re all just exhausted and in complete despair knowing what’s coming this summer, even though the game as a whole still needs to be fixed.

More Balance Changes Coming

But speaking of, at least Bandai Namco went out of their way to give us some hope today. They’ll be looking at more problematic moves in the next Season 2 balance patch, particularly those with extremely favorable risk-reward ratios for attackers. This is great to hear, as there are just too many plus-on-block mids in Season 2 right now that don’t have any real counterplay.

They’ll also be adjusting juggle damage across the board, which is great news because I really don’t want the health increase from the previous balance patch to stick around for much longer. If they reduce combo damage, they can revert the health buff, which means pokes mean more in moment-to-moment gameplay.

Heat Burst is likewise getting nerfed again, particularly in terms of its tracking. This actually already happened in Patch 1.05 last year, but for some reason, characters like Bryan and Dragunov still had the old Heat Burst tracking, so hopefully this means they’ll be brought in line with the rest of the cast.

I’m hoping that the combo extension component of Heat Burst when used in the middle of juggle combos might also be removed as a result of the upcoming Heat Burst nerfs. One of the biggest reasons combos are so highly damaging in this game is because Heat Burst makes them so much longer than they should be, which in turn means their wall carry is better than it should be. Shorter combos overall would be a huge step in the right direction, if the balance team is truly dedicated to weakening offense and strengthening defense.

But anyway, if you want to see the rest of the balance changes that they’re teasing for May 13th, check out the announcement on the Bandai Namco website.