It's a good time to be a fight fan. The Contender is back with a new series on Sky.
Fight Night Round 4
Electronic Arts
Xbox 360
Hayden Meikle
David Tua and Shane Cameron are finally gonna get it on in Hamilton in October.
And EA Sports has rolled out the follow-up to its widely-acclaimed Fight Night Round 3 game that knocked out all opposition three years ago.
Typically, EA has seen no need for an imaginative name for the follow-up, so Fight Night Round 4 it is.
And, for the most part, it's a relatively predictable sequel (to a sequel to a sequel) with only minor improvements.
You know a game has not strayed too far from its formula when it trumpets the inclusion of a convicted rapist and all-round bad egg in its roster as a major selling point.
Yes, for the first time, Iron Mike Tyson appears in the series.
That's him on the right side of the cover next to the Greatest Of All Time.
You can't bite ears or threaten to eat children, but you can take control of the man in his pomp and deliver some serious (legal) whuppings.
Other fighters on the card include the aforementioned Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Joe Frazier, both Sugar Rays and Jake Lamotta from past eras, and Joe Calzaghe, Ricky Hatton, Anthony Mundine and the great Manny Pacquaio from today.
As an aside, isn't it a reflection of the parlous state of heavyweight boxing that no current big man makes the No 1 boxing game? No Klitschkos, no other square-jawed eastern Europeans, no Shane Cameron.
Inside the ring, it appears EA has deliberately tried to speed the series up a little.
Round 3 was about patience, about working the angles until you find the right punch.
Here, it feels a bit more like an arcade title, and that's not a bad thing.
The fighters move smoothly and can fire out some dazzling punch combos.
The down side is you get a lot of fights where you knock an opponent down six or seven times before eventually getting the 10-count.
But that only detracts slightly from the sheer fun of indulging in some pugilistic posturing.
Training games have been updated, with the heavy bag joined by a maize bag (it swings and you have to dodge it) and a double-end bag.
These get a little frustrating at times and can be tough to do really well.
Most gamers will dive straight into the Legacy mode, where you create a fighter, customise everything from the shape of his nose to the lettering on his trunks, and get his career started.
A proper calendar is introduced, forcing you to choose when to train and when to schedule a fight, followed by a few weeks of rest.
Every statistic is recorded, every knockout counts towards a small rise in the rankings and eventually you progress from a chump to a champ.
Hard to find too many holes in this one.
Fight Night's the undisputed pound-for-pound champion.
