EA Sports is officially reviving its Fight Night boxing series

EA Sports is officially reviving its long-dormant boxing game series, Fight Night.

In an announcement on social media, published on Tuesday, the publisher simply wrote, “To everyone who stayed in our corner: Fight Night is coming back.”

Fight Night hasn’t seen a new installment since 2011’s Fight Night Champion. Following the last game’s development, EA shifted its attention to UFC, releasing five entries of EA Sports UFC between 2014 and 2026.

News of a new Fight Night coincides closely with the completion of EA’s sale to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF). Notably, Saudi Arabia has become a major force in staging high-profile boxing fights, and runs boxing promotion Zuffa with the UFC president Dana White.

It’s understood that complications around licensing athlete likenesses of the world’s biggest boxers – and the increasingly high fees for doing so – contributed to EA’s decision to instead focus on UFC, with which it could agree on a blanket deal for all its athletes.

Across five games released between 2004 and 2011, critics consistently praised the Fight Night series, with all five installments earning Metacritic scores in the mid-to-high 80s.

There have been calls from both fans and the boxing world for the series to return. Both Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua have appeared as bonus fighters in EA Sports UFC, and the former’s promoter Eddie Hearn claimed that he had pitched a Fight Night game to EA.

“I’ve got this little Fight Night idea which I’ve pitched to EA Sports,” he said during a live stream video in 2020.

“It’s not just a virtual game, it’s much more complicated than that… I had a call the other day with EA Sports and I keep telling them that every time I mention Fight Night on social media it goes mad. I think the return of EA Sports Fight Night would be huge.”