Daniel Pesina

Daniel Pesina (born March 31, 1959 in Chicago, Illinois, USA) is a martial arts expert and a former employee of Midway. He is the actor who played Johnny Cage and ninjas Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Reptile, Smoke, and Noob Saibot in the video games Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat II. His younger brother Carlos, whom he worked with on the first two Mortal Kombat titles, remains with Midway.

Pesina appeared as one of Shredder's foot soldiers in the 1991 movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze.

In 1994, Pesina promoted BloodStorm (a rival fighting game to the Mortal Kombat series) in an advert, dressed up as Johnny Cage. Pesina had already parted from Midway at this time, so his characters were played by different actors in subsequent installments: the ninja roles were taken over by John Turk in Mortal Kombat 3 and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, while Johnny Cage would be played by Chris Alexander in Mortal Kombat Trilogy. Pesina and his brother Carlos also secretly worked on Tattoo Assassins, another competing game to Mortal Kombat.

In the 2003 martial arts movie The Book of Swords, which also starred fellow MK actors Zamiar, Pak and Richard Divizio, he played a hitman whose task was to take out the movie's leading man.

Daniel and Carlos also appeared in a videogame-based comedy film entitled Press Start, which was released to DVD on September 25, 2007. Daniel's character is called Sasori, which is Japanese for Scorpion.

As of 2004 Dan Pesina was a teacher at the Chicago Wushuguan School.

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