More than 30 new fighters are set to be added to EA Sports UFC 5. While this is indeed exciting news, it won't be a onetime release. Instead, it's going to be gradual with the first set of fighters joining the roster today, April 4. After that new fighters are to be added over the course of a few months.
Talking about this latest move, UFC 5 Lead Producer Nate McDonald shared in a statement that they hope this announcement of new fighters is a big win for the community. He went on to say that with this number of additions is the "most substantial post-launch expansion" in the history of the franchise.
A total of nine fighters are being added today and these are:
- Movsar Evloev (#5 FEATHERWEIGHT)
- Brendan Allen (#6 MW)
- Marina Rodriguez (#6 WSW)
- Muhammed Mokaev (#7 FLYWEIGHT)
- Serghei Spivac (#9 HW)
- Geoff Neal (#10 WW)
- Umar Nurmagomedov (#10 BW)
- Tracy Cortez (#11 WFW)
- Diego Lopes
The other fighters are to be added on these schedules:
- Late April
- Matheus Nicolau (#5 FLYWEIGHT)
- Virna Jandiroba (#5 WSW)
- Manel Kape (#6 FLYWEIGHT)
- Natalia Silva (#8 WFW)
- Nassourdine Imavov (#8 MW)
- Marcin Tybura (#8 HW)
- Stephen Erceg (#10 FLYWEIGHT)
- "MVP" Michael Page (#13 WW)
- Drew Dober (#15 LW)
- May
- Roman Dolidze (#9 MW)
- Benoît Saint Denis (#11 LW)
- Anthony Hernandez (#12 MW)
- June
- Pannie Kianzad (#9 WBW)
- Loopy Godínez (#10 WSW)
- Norma Dumont (#11 WBW)
- Tagir Ulanbekov (#12 FLYWEIGHT)
- Alexandr Romanov (#13 HW)
- Mario Bautista (#13 BW)
- Chris Curtis (#14 MW)
- Jonathan Martinez (#14 BW)
- Caio Borralho (#15 MW)
- Kayla Harrison
- Michel Pereira
- Joaquin Buckley (#11 WW)
- Randy Brown
The increase in the number of fighters isn't the only good news coming. There's going to be gameplay adjustments made to let players experience a new way to use the fighters. These include tuning the stamina recovery between rounds and adjusting the evasion properties while ducking. Meanwhile, the speed and power for the different strike types have been rebalanced.
Updated as well are the grappling and ground game. Notable changes include those related to the range along with the speed of double and single-leg takedown entries. You can view the list of changes here.
EA Sports UFC 5 is a mixed martial arts fighting video game released in October 2023 and made available for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
