⭐ NEW FEATURE: RIVALRIES
Boxing has never really been about the rankings. It's about the fights people want — the ones with something behind them. This update builds that into the game.
Every rivalry now has heat. Beat a man in a war and the score isn't settled — it's opened. Heat builds through close fights, controversial decisions, comebacks off the floor and everything said between bells. It decays if you both move on, and it can be settled for good.
They will come for you. A ranked contender who fancies his chances will call you out publicly, and you choose how to answer:
Response: What it costs you
Accept: The fight gets signed there and then
Name your price: He pays a premium to share a ring with you — if he wants it badly enough
Make him earn it: Go and beat a contender first. No ducking penalty; he comes back with a real mandate
Fire back: A war of words. Heat climbs, and so does the money
Humiliate him: Huge exposure, a villain's reputation, and a man who will not forget it
Ignore it: Do it twice and the press start using the word "ducking"
And you can call them out. Pick your moment — once a month, and only against someone credible. Call out a man 200 places beneath you and you'll look ridiculous.
Fight week is now a story. Press conferences, weigh-in face-offs and post-fight interviews all give you choices, and all of them move the needle: on heat, on your reputation, on your following, and on the purse.
Heel or face. Every choice pushes you along an axis from fan favourite to pantomime villain. Both are viable careers — they just pay differently and attract different sponsors.
Grudge money is real money. A fight with genuine bad blood behind it is worth more than the same fight without it. Build the feud, get paid for the feud.
A dedicated Rivalries screen tracks every score you have outstanding, the heat on each, and who's settled.
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🥊 THE FIGHT ENGINE
A long rebalancing pass. The short version: fights should now be decided by the things that decide real fights.
Chin rebalanced. Now a 95-chin fighter is genuinely hard to hurt, and above 90 the scale doubles every five points — Marciano, Chuvalo and Foreman are as hard to move as they should be.
Conditioning matters. Being gassed used to cost almost nothing, because heart made up for it. Now running out of gas empties you, and heart keeps you punching rather than pretending you're fresh.
Power is properly scaled. The curve pivots at 65: a genuine banger hits about half again as hard as an average man, and a fighter with nothing in his hands can't end a fight however many punches he lands.
Power is the last thing to go. Speed and accuracy fall away hard past 38. Power barely moves — Foreman at 45 is still Foreman.
All eight styles rebalanced. Every style now sits inside a 45–55% win rate against the field.
Style is a tendency, not a template. A slugger can have blinding hand speed; a boxer can be flat-footed. Heart, stamina, clinch work and recovery are now yours alone rather than issued with your style.
New: your corner talks to you between rounds. Your trainer scores every round himself and tells you what he saw — "you took that one comfortably", "too close to call", "you need a knockout". It's his card, not the judges', so he can be wrong. You won't know until they read the scores.
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📋 THE FIGHTER DATABASE
All 2,497 historical fighters now carry fixed ratings for power, killer instinct, chin and durability. No more re-rolling: the same fighter is the same fighter in every world you create.
Chin and durability are separate qualities. Chuck Wepner has a 95 chin and 52 durability — impossible to knock down, cut to ribbons every time out. Vitali Klitschko is the same shape.
Power ratings rescaled so the hardest punchers top out at 85 — Tyson, Foreman, Wilder, Liston, Shavers, Dempsey, Sanders.
Muhammad Ali now stands alone at the top of the ratings.
Duplicate entries merged and mis-spellings cleaned up.
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🛠️ SIGNIFICANT FIXES
Saving no longer rewrites history. A month's fights could be regenerated after loading a save — different winners, fights between men who never met, championship bouts erased. Fixed on two levels. This was the most serious bug in the game.
Purses are honest.
Your agreed purse is now the purse you're paid. A negotiated title-fight purse was being silently re-split.
AI purses no longer change between being announced and being paid.
The champion is the A-side. A defending champion takes the bigger share even against a higher-ranked challenger.
The rematch clause used to pay your opponent nothing at all.
Finance.
Money now converts correctly — roughly $180,000 was vanishing on a $1.1M bond purchase.
Bonds no longer out-earn the stock market risk-free. Stocks now return around 6.3% a year in real terms against 0.5–3% for bonds.
A tax bill no longer liquidates your entire portfolio. It sells what it needs and leaves the rest invested.
Matchmaking.
No more five-fight series off a single stoppage. Beat a man decisively and the fight doesn't get made again — unless it's for a title, the series is level, or ten fights have passed for both of you.
Signing an opponent takes him off the market; he no longer fights someone else the month before meeting you.
A champion who loses can't fall below #12, so the rematch is still for the title.
A call-out from a ranked contender now puts your belts on the line.
Interface.
Mandatory defence offers show everything a normal fight offer does — threat assessment, titles at stake, org rankings, and head-to-head stats.
The trainer's cut on the finance screen shows what you're actually paying, not a hardcoded 10%.
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Thanks to everyone who has sent in reports — a lot of this update came directly from them.