EA Sports UFC 2, a game I enjoyed quite a bit despite some issues, just got a big update. Additions include a couple new fighters, a few game mode updates, balance tweaks and the most powerful attack in all of mixed martial arts history: the Stockton Slap.
Yes, I’m being facetious. Sorta. The Stockton Slap is the name that’s affectionately been given to Nick and Nate Diaz’s tendency to, well, slap the shit out of people mid-fight. You might be thinking, “Sure, getting slapped stings like the version of hell that’s just bees everywhere, but why slap when you can punch?”
Valid question! Mixed in with punches, however, a rangy slap can actually be a great way to anger someone into making a mistake, or to simply disrupt their rhythm. Fun fact: Nate Diaz used the Stockton Slap to great effect when he rather, er, notoriously dismantled UFC posterboy Conor McGregor at UFC 196. As Fightland‘s Jack Slack wrote in his analysis of the event: “There are fans out there claiming that McGregor gassed as if the fact that he wasn’t cutting weight meant he took a whole camp off of running. But those who have seen Nate Diaz and his brother Nick fight before know that this is what the Diaz’s do and understand how quickly it exhausts a man to be slapped and punched off of rhythm while he is winging his own shots.”
Now that very slap is in a video game. Bravo, EA, for adding a move that’s both a long-running MMA in-joke and a quietly excellent strategy.
The rest of the update is pretty standard, but it has some bright spots: the two new fighters are aged (but still effective) welterweight brawler Patrick Cote and flyweight prospect Louis Smolka. You can also now change your fighter’s appearance whenever you want in career mode. EA’s also tuned the ground portion of the game to give fighters on bottom a bit more of a chance (though the ground game itself still remains woefully awkward and not particularly enjoyable).
You can read the full update notes here.
Comments
6 responses to “EA’s UFC Game Adds One Of MMA’s Most Notorious Moves”
I don’t watch MMA and I have no idea what this sentence above is trying to say, it looks like random jumbled words. Can someone translate?
LMAO – Conor took a fight at 170 lbs which is closer to his walking weight (the normal weight you would walk around in) – he usually fights at 145 lbs, in which MOST fighters cut to reach their fighting weight. This is done in a variety ways, dehydration, a huge change of diet in the last few weeks leading up to a fight, and to be healthy must be done systematically throughout the period of the fight camp (8-12 weeks prior to fight). Weigh ins are held the day before the fight so the last few lbs are usually sweated out and dehydrated from your body. Saunas, salt baths the lot.
You will even find some fighters having a sauna, coming out and having someone scrape ALL the sweat off their body, then put a sweat suit (basically a huge garbage bag) on and go for a run to sweat more out.
So he didnt have to cut weight and it was well documented he was eating steak for breakfast in the week leading up to the fight. Now there are a lot of different thoughts on this kind of stuff but the suggestion from fans is that he didnt have to do as much cardio to get the weight down so therefore gassed. Another theory would be that he is fighting with a lot more bulk than he is used to, thus putting more pressure on the cardio system and causing him to gas earlier. Oh btw to gas just means to tire out…
Another way to put it was that Conor blew his wad after eating steak all week and felt like going for a nap in the second round 😉
Fans think he got tired (“gassed”).
He normally has to lose a solid 10-15kg of weight in the weeks leading up to the fight (“cutting weight”) so that he can make the usual Featherweight limit (145lbs), but he didn’t have to do that here because the fight with Diaz was contested at Welterweight (170lbs) so neither man had to lose weight.
The writer was sarcastically implying that people think he gassed because he didn’t do any running during his training camp (kind of the fighting equivalent of “the crunch” that game studios do in the weeks prior to release. It’s normally 4-8 weeks of focussed training) because he didn’t need to lose weight.
Does that cover it?
Yep, that covers all of it. Thanks foggy and @scarnon! I have to say, that’s some crazy specific lingo if you’re not in the know.
Gassed: Gastank or the level of cardio you have. People who don’t train properly tend to gas out midway into the fight and don’t have any more energy to hit hard or move as fast.
Cutting weight: Fighters don’t tend to walk around in the weight division they fight at. McGregor usually fights at 65kg in the featherweight division but out of competition he usually walks around at 70+kg. So before fights they cut weight to get to the required amount for the weight in and they try to rehydrate and get that weight back on 24 hours prior to the fight. Basically every fighter does it for all combat sports because it offers them an advantage.
Camp: The 6-12 weeks before the fight the fighter undergoes a training camp to cut weight and tune their style to match their opponents. Basically combat crunch time.
Hope that clear it up.
Cote shouldve been in the game from the start!
I look forward to slapping the shit out of Conor some more. Maybe if I slap him enough in-game he will call off the diaz rematch at UFC200? *crosses fingers*