For the past week, EA Sports has been teasing a “mystery fighter” in its upcoming MMA game, EA Sports UFC. While the big reveal was supposed to take place April 7, several GameStop stores have unintentionally spilled the beans on the enigmatic playable character.
Indeed, as many suspected, the mystery fighter is martial arts legend Bruce Lee.
Fansided.com took a snapshot of a poster at a local GameStop, which advertises Lee as a pre-order bonus (you can check out the story here via Alex Schlinsky).
Last week, EA released clues about the mystery fighter, including that he never fought in the UFC, would be playable in four weight classes and was born in the United States. The most obvious clue, however, came when the video game company teased what his trunks would look like:
Look familiar? #MysteryFighter. Day 5 Reveal: http://t.co/OudCYYUtAj pic.twitter.com/nSL3GMFcWb
— EA SPORTS UFC (@EASPORTSUFC) April 5, 2014
Despite that Lee died 20 years before UFC 1, he has long been closely associated with the world’s top mixed martial arts promotion. In a 2004 interview, UFC President Dana White said the following, via Fight Times:
Actually, the father of mixed martial arts, if you will, was Bruce Lee. If you look at the way Bruce Lee trained, the way he fought, and many of the things he wrote, he said the perfect style was no style. You take a little something from everything. You take the good things from every different discipline, use what works, and you throw the rest away.
On top of that, the UFC has long produced Bruce Lee memorabilia, ranging from T-shirts to action figures, and has used that relationship to promote the organization in Asian markets.
For the EA Sports UFC (and, indeed, UFC games in general), having playable characters who are not UFC fighters is not a particularly strange departure from the norm. THQ’s UFC Undisputed series largely included UFC fighters as playable characters but also sported TapouT founders “Mask,” “Skyscrape” and “Punkass.” Before that, in the UFC: Throwdown and UFC: Tapout series, players could choose to fight as UFC personalities Dana White, UFC chairman Lorenzo Fertitta or ring announcer Bruce Buffer.
In addition to Lee, EA Sports UFC is projected to feature approximately 100 total characters across the UFC’s nine weight classes. It is projected to come out Spring 2014 for the Xbox One and Playstation 4.
For more updates, check out the official EA Sports UFC website and keep an eye on Bleacher Report.
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