Igor would make me a happy man.

Dana was also responsible for the ban on Affliction clothing within UFC events after Atencio and company decided to go from being sponsors to direct competitors with their Affliction promotion (recently defunct).

Now that Affliction is strictly back to the T-shirt/sponsor business, White announced "Ban Over."

White stating UFC fighters who sign with EA Sports (who wants to be a direct competitor for the UFC franchise of games) will not be fighting in the UFC is really no more unreasonable than say a WWE Pro Wrestler taking his likeness and signing with a competing non-WWE wrestling game franchise and expecting to be able to still be in the WWE.

As for EA Sports, it wasn't so much that they arbitrarily decided that MMA wasn't marketable enough, it's that their official reason for not even considering taking the UFC license was a blunt "MMA is not a sport."

So for them to turn around and say now that the market (and demand) is clearly there that MMA is a sport so it's now okay to justify starting our own game franchise, is hypocritical. But it's too big a plum to leave solely to the UFC.

EA should be punished. I really hope their sports game will be the one that flops for once.

I think it's great that the UFC game was so successful. MMA is a new and exciting sport, one of the few that I care about, and I hope it will gain popularity and challenge boxing some day.

Why was the UFC game such a sales success btw?

I think it already does challenge boxing. At least, it does in videogame sales. It's running circles around Fight Night, and it has pretty much killed the Smackdown series. I think UFC 2009 was so successful because the sport was gaining immense popularity, and it filled a very needed gap.

It's all in the timing.

UFC is at an all time high, PPV sales continue to climb and set records, it's becoming more mainstream than ever and much of this has to do with the efforts of the UFC (Dana White) to gain legitimacy for MMA as a spectator sport.

For those who have grown tired of the politics of boxing, it's new and exciting and there is a huge catalog of interesting fighters with unique back stories and maybe most importantly it's about as real as it gets. Prima Donna behavior and theatrics (barring Lesnar, who still seems to have one foot in the WWE) are virtually non-existent.

I hope this game bombs worse than anything this gen.

How dare they do that to poor Dana

to the guys hoping this will flop:

if you have the best fighter in the world and the most popular fighter in the world in the game, i doubt it'll fail.

That doesn't mean we can't want it to flop...I swear, EA have become just as bad as Activision again.

Only hard core fans know who Fedor is.

And as popular as Randy may be, he does represent the last generation of UFC/MMA superstars, much like Chuck and Tito.

As much as I hate to admit it, Brock is a much bigger draw and more instantly recognizable to those relatively new to MMA. Same goes for GSP and to a lesser extent, Anderson Silva.

It's more of a question of who EA gets for the line up than who is available.

Actually would like to see some of the older Gracies in it.I always loved the Brazilian jijutsu style and nobody does it better than them.