EA Sports announced today, Ronda Rousey will have yet another accolade added to her name as she takes her place as EA’s first female global cover athlete when EA UFC 2 launches in spring of next year.
“As a gamer myself, and growing up a little overly obsessed with video games, its pretty surreal to be on the cover of a game myself,” Rousey explains. “To have a woman on the cover of a UFC game, it shows a lot of progress. I’m really happy to be involved with that.”
Rousey is currently the undefeated UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion, with a record of 12-0 in MMA, and 6-0 in the UFC.
EA Sports Creative Director, Brian Hayes, says she was an obvious choice for the cover. Speaking with MMAjunkie, “It’s the first time a female athlete’s been the lead cover athlete for an EA Sports title,” Hayes said. “It shows how meteoric her rise has been. When we started development on ‘EA UFC 1,’ the women’s bantamweight division didn’t exist in the UFC. We weren’t planning on creating female fighters and then all of a sudden Ronda Rousey came around.”
Hayes continued, “As a result largely of what she’s accomplished, we’ve gone from when we signed the deal (with the UFC), there was no concept of female fighters in the game, to now there is a female fighter in the cover who is arguably the biggest UFC fighter in the world.”
The second cover athlete has yet to be announced. 2014’s EA UFC also saw two athletes sharing the cover, Jon Jones and Alexander Gustafsson.
As we find out more about UFC 2, you’ll find it all right here on Gamespresso.