Creating a Super Fighter: We've Reinvented the Science.... Read on...Create a Superior Fighter Rated Well Over 100 Without Cheating

In UFC 2009: Undisputed, creating a superior fighter via career mode isn't hard at all. Really, it's a matter of sticking to a game plan that ensures you will be maximally compensated for your time and training in the short length of time (only 7 years) that you have to build the best fighter you can.

By adhering to the outline that I'm about to go over, not only will you achieve this, but your created fighter will trump any glitch-created super fighter you may encounter online. In instances of running across players that will use these kinds of fighters, you'll find that an optimally created, career tested fighter will have a substantial statistical advantage.

If you've read the instruction manual of the game, or observed any websites that talk about creating a fighter outside of career mode rather than within career mode, you know that the potential of a career fighter greatly outweighs the potential of a fighter created outside of career mode. This is mainly due to the fact that you have as much time as you can cram into 7-8 career years to build up valuable points, which can be put towards strength, speed, and cardio.

There are five simple rules for creating a monster, with the aim of making your fighter's overall rating anywhere between 105 and 110 by the end of his career. These numbers mainly vary upon where your focusing in training is, but as evidenced by the performance of my own career fighters against players who had the nerve (/balls) to put glitch fighters into the octagon, not only did I beat them but I did so ruthlessly.

I can't tell you how many times I've had the cord unplugged on me, or the Xbox turned off on me, as I'm cranking on the submission or have just seen to my glitch-fighter opponent tap out. Really, this is a problem in and of itself. Everyone who's ever pulled a plug on me in this instance has had Live complaints filed against them for Tampering and Cheating, and then a Player Review submitted to block them because they quit early. Join the cause. Do the same. Eventually, we'll see progress here, hopefully by UFC 2010.

Before we start, let me preface this lesson by including the detail that you should not be training a created fighter in career mode at any difficulty other than easy. If you are attempting to do so, you are a bonehead. Way to try and impress your videogame rather than trying to impress everybody that you're going to be playing online. By the way, your Xbox is not impressed. It offers you no bonuses in career mode for making your own life harder. Change your difficulty back to Easy.

Rule #1 -Forget About Sparring... For Now

This may sound funny, but the yield for this type of training, this early in your career, is nowhere near worth it. Considering that the statistical advantage of the career-created fighter is their ability to maximize their three main attributes, you should be spending as much time as possible building your strength to its maximum level, then your speed and your cardio to just under the level that affects your strength. At heavyweight this is 76 in both cardio and speed. We'll get to that later.

For now your focus should only be on training your three primary attributes, and attending camp invites. Invites to train with other schools add to your technical skill level, which not only offers statistical bonuses, but furthers your created fighters arsenal of moves. During Invites, anything less than five achievements per session is unacceptable, and anything much more than that is overkill. Mathematically, there is no way to avoid having to train three sessions between each level advancement in each art. Therefore, it's logical to build some kind of buffer up, and buy yourself some time by not having to hit the reset button every time you blow it in a camp invite. If you ever end up with under 5 achievements in one session, reset and try it over.

Rule #2-Get Paid

Your shorts have space for ten logos. Fill all ten of them with the logo of the highest paying sponsor. If one's paying you 80, you'll earn 800 extra per fight. Credibility is what's unlocking your sparring partners, among other things. This is an obscure, nice feature in the customization of your fighter, and therefore it goes underutilized. It can be of great benefit to you in your efforts to advance a fighter's career.

Rule #3- Forget About Muay Thai... Forever (in this game, anyway)

In this version of the game, Muay Thai is a vastly under-represented art. The best aspects of Muay Thai seem to have been stripped out of the game as a result of the developers either not having enough time to elaborate on the complexity of a developing system (which is understandable), or having an effective mechanism for limiting the moves granted to each of the included fighters with some notion of accuracy that was easy to implement within their timeframe for deadline. Take for example Frank Mir's awesome striking, or Mirko Cro Cop's conventional stance (he's a southpaw).

Also, it doesn't seem that the Muay Thai clinch is enough of a factor to justify choosing this is your primary striking style, with such beneficial options as a comparable clinch in kick boxing, and the superior hand speed of the boxer. Up your clinch defense statistics, and it becomes another null concept.

Therefore, not only for the purpose of eliminating the possibility of redundancy in your created fighter, but also for the purpose of maximizing your training efforts once you start sparring, it's best to go with either the boxing or kickboxing style. Personally I prefer kickboxing, as it offers the advantage of having a head kick, the superman punch, and the spinning back kick that can be effectively deployed when running in at an opponent, the latter of the two granted as you advance your skills through training camp invites..

Both of these fighting styles offered the single-collar tie, which can effectively make you an unstoppable clinching killing machine in sparring sessions. By the time my created fighter was ready to go online, I had the art of charging across the octagon, single-collar tying my opponent, and unleashing devastating uppercuts upon his face to the tune of his knockdown, followed by a rain of shots that resulted in his knockout, all of which resulted in maximum points for my sparring training sessions.

The idea of sticking to your camp invites alongside your attribute training is to get your kickboxing or boxing level up to the point that you have the uppercut available to you from the single-collar tie once you've begun sparring. Now that we're talking about sparring we move on to rule number three.

Rule #4- Lose

I must be adamant when I say this: you must do your very best to stay out of the top 10 rankings with your created fighter. This means you will lose fights, but don't feel so bad: you only get one accomplishment for going undefeated in career mode.

Whenever you get to within 13 places of the top spot, you need to lose. Winning a fight within this threshold of the top 10 can result in you going from 14th to ninth in an instant. At the point that you've reached the top 10, the difficulty presented to you by your sparring partner in training sessions increases drastically. You must take every step to avoid this happening, in order to maximize what will eventually be your finalized attributes and statistics. In this respect, a loss is a small price to pay for a fighter that can defeat even a glitch-created super fighter.

Now that we've covered rule number three let's move on to rule number four.

Rule #5- When you spar, spar correctly

Forget everything the videogame is telling you before your sparring sessions about what you need to accomplish in your sparring sessions. The only thing you need to accomplish is the unholy unleashing of traumatizing amounts of damage upon your sparring partner, while minimizing the damage your fighter incurs over the course of the session.

This is most effectively done by rushing in, establishing the single-collar tie right away, and unleashing the uppercut to the ahead of your opponent in repetitious, rapid-fire succession. Every time, without fail, this will drop your opponent to the floor, often dazed and incapacitated, after several consecutive shots. This is when you run in for the kill, and begin to drop bombs. You should be able to finish your opponent at least once per sparring session in this effort, while absorbing minimal damage. Using this strategy you will achieve the maximum amount of available points for your training efforts in every single session.

It should be noted that if your sparring partner is resisting your attempts to establish the single collar tie by countering with a takedown or establishing a clinch of his own, you've gone too far up in the rankings, and should probably lose your next fight. It's rare that this happens outside of the top 10, but if you insist on pushing it and you somehow end up in the 11th-ranked spot, the price you pay is lost maximum potential for your training efforts in one session.

Look at it this way: someone out there who's doing the same thing I'm telling you about didn't push it, and will have those few extra attribute points on you somewhere when you meet him with your created fighters. They might not matter, but they might. This also goes right back to you, trying to impress your Xbox. Knock it off.

Using this methodology of sparring, once your sparring partner has hit level 3, you will earn 100 points per session, followed by 132 points per session at level 4, then 144 points per session at level 5.
Your sparring schedule is drive upon how much you can achieve in the timeframe you can achieve it in. Anything less than 75% health going into a sparring match is going to give some kind of hit to your overall benefit from training, and this becomes painfully obvious when training. Once your cardio is at 80, you can actually train two consecutive times from 100% stamina without any impact to your statistical training benefit. Your schedule can look something like this.

Week 1: Spar: Stamina drops to 65% - 100 pts
Week 2: Spar: Stamina drops to 30% - 70 pts
Week 3: Rest: Stamina raises to 80% - 0 pts
Week 4: Spar: Stamina drops to 45% - 100 pts
Week 5: Rest: Stamina raises to 95% - 0 pts
Week 6: Spar: Stamina drops to 60% - 100 pts.
Week 7: Rest: Stamina raises to 100% - 0 pts
Week 8: Spar: Stamina drops to 65% - 100 pts.

Total Yield in this timeframe with this method: 470 pts, as opposed to only 400 pts. yielded in an unvarying, one on-one off eight week sparring schedule. That 70 pts. gradually increases as your sparring partner's level goes up. Slight tweaks to a long-term scheme can make a huge difference.

Some things to keep in mind

The maximum obtainable strength that your weight class affords you will not only aide you in the areas of flash knockout potential, but also offers advantages while grappling, advantages while trying to escape submissions, and advantages when striking from any position. It's important to maximize this stat before any of the others, as tempting as it may be to train your speed or your cardio. Both are important, so don't get me wrong there. However strength ends fights in this game, and it's proven.

Don't start rejecting camp invites until you've maximized your ability to train in both arts to the fullest. This is level 3, full gauge in both arts with all benefits obtained, statistical and technical. You don't see them on the screen where you're adding points to your fighters overall statistics after training sessions, but you can see the benefits that proficiency in these martial arts offers your fighter in the preview screen when choosing him, and also via career mode menus.

Make your fighter as big as bad as possible, as this is what everyone else will do if they are that serious about trying to win with created fighters. Reach rules the day, and provides mean range for low kicks. This piece of advice doesn't so much apply if you're trying to build excluded fighters into the game via career mode to your liking, but it's a nice thought if you just want to go out and ruined a good time of somebody that's taking this game way too personally.

As you train your sparring, aim to achieve 100s in as many grappling-relative defensive statistics, and perhaps all of them, if possible. Grappling and submission levels of 100 each are attainable via the guidelines set here, so go for that in tandem with an emphasis on your speed attribute. You'll create an unstoppable grappling machine.

Lastly, and again, Strength is of paramount importance at any class, so work to maximize it, because it makes a difference. the lower-weight fighters tend to allow for a lower maximum strength, so the deficit can be made up in further attributing such skills as speed, creating an applicably faster and stronger fighter as your created fighters decrease in weight.

Now, get out there and ruin someone's good time. =)