14 DAY TRIAL // One of the biggest sources of speculation and rumors in the sports game genre is EA Sports' newest project regarding Mixed Martial Arts. The main conflict is that, currently, the UFC, the biggest MMA fighting circuit, has a contract with THQ, which materialized in UFC 2009 Undisputed, a very successful title.
This has led EA Sports to start dealing with fighters personally, and, according to rumors, managing to sign a lot of them for the upcoming EA Sports MMA title. This made UFC President Dana White quite angry, and, as a result, he has recently made quite a few statements regarding this subject.
He went on to say that when the UFC began he approached EA to sign a video game deal with the company, but it seems that the corporation wasn't interested. “It's easy to sit on the other side of the table and judge me on how I react to stuff like this. But let me tell you what – I've been in the trenches for almost 10 years, and I've been dealing with all these businesses, and EA was one of them. EA Sports told us, 'You're not a real sport, we wouldn't touch this thing. We want nothing to do with this.'”
White emphasizes that both THQ and the UFC took a huge gamble when they started making UFC 2009 Undisputed, as the economy was in recession, but now that it has seen a lot of success, EA Sports wants a piece of it with its new project.
“We [took a gamble], THQ and the UFC, to make a video-game deal in the worst economy in the world,” White said. “We go out there and do this thing, and it's successful, and now [expletive] EA Sports wants to do a video game. Really? That's not what you told us a year-and-a-half ago. You told us you'd never be in business with us. They wouldn't even take a meeting because mixed martial arts disgusted them. This wasn't a real sport. Boy, they got over that real quick, didn't they?”
In the end, White revealed that any fighter that would sign with EA Sports would have nothing to do with the UFC afterwards. “I'm not tap-dancing around this thing or whatever,” White said. “I'm telling you straight-up, I'm at war with them right now. That's how I look at it. You won't be in the UFC.”
It definitely seems that EA Sports won't manage to have a healthy relationship with the UFC, meaning that the job of the publishing label will be that much harder to make a video game that will appeal to fans of mixed martial arts.