The sweet science is an incredibly difficult thing to translate to consoles. Even putting aside the complicated politics of the boxing world for a moment, the idea of capturing the artistry of these athletes with just eight buttons seems impossible. But in what can only have been a labour of love, it looks like the creative minds at indie studio Steel City Interactive have pulled it off. Undisputed is coming for that title of the definitive boxing game.
Creating a boxing game like Undisputed – especially considering the current state of the sport – comes with some obvious logistical hurdles vis-a-vis obtaining rights. With the NBA2K series, the National Basketball Players Association has a licensing agreement with Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. which lets them use the names and likenesses of all of the athletes currently in the NBA. EA Sports has a deal with the football players’ union FIFPRO and UFC fighters all fall under the totalitarian regime of Uncle Dana. In the case of boxing, however, it’s a complete free-for-all.
That’s the thing that really stands out about Undisputed as a boxing game, even in its infancy. It’s going to include over 210 licensed boxers from the past and present. They’ve got deals and partnerships in place with all four of the major boxing sanctioning bodies (IBF, WBC, IBO, WBO) as well as staples in the boxing world such as The Ring Magazine, Empire Pro Tape, Compubox, Cleto Reyes, Rival Boxing Gear, BoxRec, and the British Boxing Board of Control.
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They’ve also included many legendary trainers, promoters, presenters, cutmen, and referees as NPCs to add legitimacy to the game. It looks like they are replicating the different broadcasts, whether it be BT Sports, Sky Sports, or DAZN. You’ve got to respect that level of dedication. This was clearly made by some serious boxing fanatics.
In the Early Access period of the Undisputed Beta, we already got to see what this game can eventually be. You can create your own fighter, promoter, or coach, and go from the amateurs to world championships. There are also online and offline multiplayer modes, which means that you and your mate can sort out your differences over Tyson Fury vs Deontay Wilder IV.
You can fight for over nine Championship Belts, including Continental and National titles, as well as earn 50 attributes and traits for your fighter; you can fight anywhere from gyms, to auditoriums, to large arenas, to outdoor stages. More fighters, venues, game modes, eSports Tournaments, additional commentary teams, reporters, and presenters are reportedly on the way.
By the way, TEN 24 Digital Capture – the team that worked on Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding – is responsible for scanning the fighters with state-of-the-art technology. An impressive list of active fighters including Tyson Fury, Canelo Alvarez, Oleksandr Usyk, and Deontay Wilder sat in the chair to be featured in this game. Icons of the sport such as Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, Jake LaMotta, Micky Ward, Shawn “Showtime” Porter, and Joe Frazier have been faithfully recreated to their fighting primes.
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Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, the names absent are still greater than the names present: Floyd Mayweather Jr, Manny Pacquiao, Mike Tyson, Anthony Joshua, Gennady Golovkin, Sonny Liston, Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis, and George Foreman are just a few that immediately stand out as missing from the current lineup of fighters. These are major draw cards that will hopefully be added as the Undisputed hype continues to build. Jake Paul, however, is an absence we’re quite thankful for.
We’ve waited for over a decade since EA Sports’ FIGHT NIGHT Champion, the last fully-fledged boxing game, was released. Since then, the likes of Floyd Mayweather Jr and Eddie Hearn have each flirted with the idea of making a boxing game. Instead, we’re seeing something that started out as a fun side project started by three brothers slowly morph into the world’s definitive boxing game.
The past few decades have seen the same criticisms of boxing crop up again and again: there are too many belts, the best fights never get made, the judging is atrocious, and the brain trauma isn’t that great to begin with. Of course, none of this is an issue here.
We don’t have anything close to a release date for Undisputed yet. The game only recently announced its current title after being called ESports Boxing Club for several years. But we do know that it’ll be published by PLAION and released on PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox One & Series X|S, as well as PC via Steam. Keep an eye out for key updates here.
