A few months back, EA’s marketing team probably thought that their choices for the front cover of this year’s UFC game — two of the world’s most popular and successful fighters, Ronda Rousey and Connor McGregor — were as safe as could be. Then this happened. And now this.
Rousey, seemingly invincible, was knocked out in a matter of seconds. McGregor, a man redefining the meaning of the word “cocksure”, was tonight choked out in front of an audience of shocked millions (albeit not in a title fight).
Meaning that when UFC 2 hits store shelves next week, the last time people saw both the game’s athletes in action they were getting their arse kicked.
Ill omens. The illest of omens. Meaningless omens, maybe, since a game’s cover art has almost zero bearing on the game’s quality, but still. Not a good look.
Folks are already drawing “Madden curse” comparisons, but then, at least in Madden it’s only one athlete getting knocked down/over every year.
In the long run, few will probably care. These two are still two of the best fighters on the planet, and for all we know next year they will both be back at their very best. But tonight? Tonight is a time for stuff like this:
#UFC196 pic.twitter.com/fOz35VGSzV
— BLACK ADAM SCHEFTER (@B1ackSchefter) March 6, 2016
Comments
15 responses to “UFC 2’s Cover Is Pretty Funny About Now”
Wow they lost one fucking fight. You know what’s pretty funny? Your stupid face.
yeeeeepppp, its articles like this that remind me why i don’t come here often.
Then i quickly remember ign is nothing but annoying videos and here i am again
Lol @ Butthurt fanboy
I don’t even watch MMA. I have no idea who these people are. I just like to start shit. Hence the name.
McGregor shot himself in the foot. I’m just glad that it happened in his ‘less important’ division. He’ll learn from it and he won’t showboat his chin around again.
People quickly forget that he lost a fight, but the man still holds a title over some tough competition.
Yeah he was pretty humble in defeat unlike Jose aldo who started mouthing off instantly after McGregor lost. I love Jose aldo but he got knocked out big time so he should lay off the insults and wait for his rematch.
To be completely honest, I think that most of the insults etc are so the public get so incensed by the entire situation that Dana White has no other option but to schedule a rematch between McGregor and Aldo. Essentially Aldo is competing with Dos Anjos and some other fighters for the next (big-money!) fight against McGregor. Don’t forget, he knows his career is limited and if you have to piss some people off in order to secure a $250,000+ fight purse, then I would be on the phone cursing and spitting in minutes.
It’s pretty obvious that McGregor has become the king of this – you could see he was humbled at the end of the fight, which is a complete contrast to him before the fight.
He didn’t shoot himself in the foot, he just lost because he was the smaller less skilled guy.
First his power failed him, then his technique, then his cardio, then his chin and finally his ground game.
Conor’s a fairly limited fighter, it was pretty obvious that as soon as he fought someone he couldn’t bully with his strikes that he was going to be in big trouble, he said today that he knew he was in trouble once he hit him clean a few times and he was still there.
Smaller? Yes. Less skilled? Not a chance in the world. Diaz is an average fighter who happens to be able to take a punch (or in this case, a lot of them.)
Conor was unable to knock Diaz out, obviously but had he not started talking shit toward the end of round 1 and literally hanging his chin out toward Diaz early in the second, then it would have been an easy decision to McGregor. Everything he said in the post-fight is irrelevant, he was being humble because win or lose, Conor generally is after it’s all done.
McGregor should never tried to come up (another) weight class to suit Diaz. Regardless of 165 being a more natural weight for Conor, that was too short a timeframe to safely put the 20-odd pounds without ruining his cardio, let alone the added 5 to meet Diaz’s need of a 170 fight.
At the end of the day McGregor is still a champion in one division, he will almost certainly destroy Dos Anjos if he goes for it with better preparation and Nate Diaz will remain a middle of the range fighter (unless he’s suspended).
Haha! I’ve been on MMA websites all day and you’re the most deluded Conor fan I’ve run into so far.
Diaz is a LW, that fight was essentially a LW fight where they agreed not to cut weight. Neither of them hit 170lbs, he didn’t have to put on weight, they just both naturally walk around between 155 and 170 which is all you need to be for a WW fight. When Nate has fought at WW he’s been man-handled. Have you seen the Rory Mac fight? This sums it up (http://cdn0.sbnation.com/imported_assets/714756/64mm3t_medium.gif). He’s not a decent sized WW which is why he doesn’t fight there.
I have no idea why you think he’d “destroy” RDA, especially since RDA is a smarter, better rounded fighter than Diaz and proved as much by kicking his ass 14 months ago.
Diaz was a hand-picked, stylistically favourable, middle of the pack LW contender given under two weeks to prepare and after months of talking about how he was coming for both the LW AND WW titles…. Conor LITERALLY got bitch-slapped and submitted.
He just doesn’t have a skillset to trouble guys who he can’t intimidate with his power. He doesn’t fight to win rounds, his wrestling is average at best and his ground game is a liability.
He’s a great striker, he has big power and a good chin at FW, he’s game and entertaining to watch… but this stuff about him being a top-ranked P4P fighter is hilarious. He’s the least-skilled male Champion and Diaz proved as much.
Cue Kotaku readers whining “WHY DO THEY PUBLISH SO MANY UFC ARTICLES ON A GAMING SITE WAAAAAAH”
Love it!
McGregor got humbled – such a good fight. Given that I’ve started BJJ in the last 2 months I was screaming for both the RNC finishes at the end – good to see some of those techniques validated by the best in the UFC. Mind you, I am aware that the striking must lead into the BJJ, but I ain’t getting into BJJ to get into MMA, just for fitness and some self-defence 🙂
At least this article is talking about the UFC game.
Rousey at least still 100% deserves to be there. As far as I’m concerned, she is still the champ 🙂
Both of them are still champions, still amazing martial artists. Dunno what all the fuss is over this game cover, they’re both still relevant to the industry.
EA cover curse strikes again!