Somebody at EA Sports has finally woken up because Fight Night is coming back. Can you believe it? After 15 years of fans asking what happened to one of the best boxing series ever made, EA has confirmed its return. Although the announcement itself was as short as they come.
“To everyone who stayed in our corner: Fight Night is coming back.”
No trailer, release date or list of fighters. EA did not even tell us which platforms will receive the game. It dropped one sentence, added a boxing glove and left everyone else to do the shouting. Go figure.
The last game in the series was Fight Night Champion, which arrived in 2011. Since then, we have seen three PlayStation consoles, several Xbox models and five EA Sports UFC games. For boxing fans, there was not much else to do except to continue playing the same title. Of course, they did their bit by regularly reminding EA that it had left them behind.
According to VGC, EA released five Fight Night games between 2004 and 2011, and all of them received strong reviews. The games were popular. So one has to wonder why people stopped receiving them. I mean, games that were popular and that people enjoyed are a no-brainer. Maybe licensing played a part in that.
The UFC allows EA to negotiate with one organisation for access to its fighters. Boxing is a slightly different animal. Fighters have different promoters, managers and business arrangements. Everyone wants a seat at the table, and I’m guessing several people also want to be paid before the chairs are even brought out.
But to have to wait 15 years. That is a very long time to solve a problem.
What made Fight Night Champion so good was the way every punch felt like it had weight behind it. Button mashing would only get you so far. Players had to watch their stamina, find openings and avoid becoming too confident. Because the moment you thought you had everything under control, your boxer would receive one clean hit and suddenly start moving as though the entire ring had shifted to the left.
The story mode also gave the game something extra. Players followed Andre Bishop through prison fights, corrupt promoters and a boxing career that came with enough drama to keep things interesting between matches. With sports games, we often receive a menu and we begin the season. Fight Night Champion, on the other hand, actually gave us someone to care about. So I’m just giving you a heads- up that the new game has quite a bit to live up to.
It’s fair to say that boxing itself has also changed since 2011. Tyson Fury, Anthony Joshua, Oleksandr Usyk and Canelo Álvarez have become some of the sport’s biggest names. But the women have also entered the ring. Katie Taylor, Claressa Shields and Amanda Serrano have all helped to pull enormous audiences. Now imagine that roster inside a modern Fight Night game. Yeah, its going to be big, man.
But I also have concerns, because this is a modern sports game we are talking about. I do not want to open the game and immediately meet six different currencies, a battle pass and a special pair of gloves that costs real money. Please just allow me to create a boxer with questionable facial hair and begin a career in a small gym.
I think a proper career mode should let players work their way through the ranks. You know, let us train, develop rivalries and make terrible decisions about when to accept the next fight. I know people think of losses as a bad thing. But the fact is that when you lose, you learn and injuries should affect the journey. That way, when we win a title, it should feel like something we earned rather than another box we ticked. Of course, EA has not confirmed any of these features. We do not know who is developing the game, when it will arrive or whether it even has a proper name yet.
All we have is one sentence. And after 15 years, that sentence has done quite a bit of work.
Fight Night is finally coming back.
Now EA simply needs to remember what made us miss it.
