Ganryu (Japanese: 巌竜, Hepburn: Ganryū) is a sumo wrestler who is barred from the sport for infractions such as firebreathing and taunting his opponents. This rejection, coupled with his mounting gambling debts, steers him into a life of crime. Heihachi Mishima hires him as a henchman for the first King of Iron Fist tournament, in which Ganryu loses to Yoshimitsu, who then drains Ganryu's remaining finances and leaves him broke. Kazuya Mishima pays him handsomely for his services in his Mishima Zaibatsu corporation. Ganryu participates in the second tournament as Kazuya's bodyguard, but he also wishes to build his own sumo ring to impress his secret crush, Michelle Chang, but instead, she defeats him in battle and Ganryu returns to Japan. Two decades after the events of Tekken 2, Ganryu opens a sumo stable and trains other wrestlers. However, after seeing Michelle's daughter Julia on television fighting in the fourth tournament, he enters the fifth in hopes of wooing Julia if he is able to recover her lost "Forest Rejuvenation Data" that he eventually finds inside the Mishima Zaibatsu's laboratory, but Julia receives the information and flees before Ganryu can propose marriage. Now faced with a failing restaurant he had opened afterward in Hawaii, Ganryu enters the tournament again in Tekken 6 in attempt to advertise the restaurant and bring in revenue. Unfortunately, Ganryu accidentally donated all his restaurant earnings to Julia's reforestation campaign. In order to fix his financial problems, Ganryu decided to enter the seventh tournament.