It sometimes seems as if EA, and indeed a lot of the gaming industry, has somehow forgotten not just the Fight Night series, but boxing in general. It's not surprising perhaps - MMA has eclipsed boxing in terms of real-world popularity, at least in the U.S. and Canada, so from a raw numbers perspective it makes more sense to focus on the next UFC game. But boxing still has a strong following, and gamers would be well-served with a new Fight Night title.

The Fight Night series dates back to 2004, and was itself an attempt to reinvigorate EA's boxing lineup in the wake of the Knockout Kings games. Its signature feature was called "Total Punch Control," later renamed to "Full-Spectrum Punch Control" in Fight Night Champion. It's hard to oversell how important it was - instead of canned, button-based punches and maneuvers, controls were based on analog stick gestures, letting players fight more like a real boxer. That meant combining jabs, hooks, crosses, and uppercuts with bobs, weaves, and parries, all aimed precisely. It took some time to master, but made boxing games a lot more nuanced.

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As good as the UFC games can be, by their nature, they have to drop some of the complexity out of their stand-up fighting. With kicks, grappling, and submissions on board, there's essentially no room for something as elaborate as Total Punch Control, at least in a way that wouldn't feel clunky. So a new Fight Night would offer martial arts fans something genuinely different - not the least because, as people with real-world experience can attest, fighting changes completely when submissions are out of the picture. Indeed, many people prefer boxing to MMA because its rules keep things dynamic.

Fight Night Needs To Leap Into The 2020s

Fight Night Champion

More than anything, there's a lot of wasted potential if Fight Night doesn't return. Graphics and physics technologies have advanced considerably since the PS3 and Xbox 360, which is where the series left off - it's almost hard to imagine how gruesome its sweaty, face-deforming punches would look on a PS5 or Xbox Series X. EA could use the opportunity to evolve and streamline mechanics, and there's a whole new generation of boxers people would get to control. Everyone from heavyweight champ Tyson Fury to infamous YouTubers Jake and Logan Paul could make an appearance - and EA would surely be glad to sell people a Rocky Balboa pack as DLC.

There are two main challenges to getting a new Fight Night off the ground. The first is selling EA on the economics of the game, but that's probably the easier one. More serious is that the last entry, Champion, shipped in 2011. Many of the developers at EA Canada (now EA Vancouver) have probably moved on to other teams, or outside EA entirely - the series would probably have to be recreated from scratch. But if there's money to be had, it could certainly happen.

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