UFC 2009 Undisputed

Yuke's long relationship with the men in spandex is deployed as an indicator of the benchmark standard for grapple-based fighting (which isn't a cast iron guarantee of quality - WWE SmackDown vs Raw 2008 scored an underwhelming six out of ten on Eurogamer), but Kirby is keen to dampen fears that Undisputed is just WWE in disguise. "We've created from scratch - everything from the first line of code to what we're showing you now has been created for this specific game," he says.

Yet another suit from the corporate cavalcade gives us some detail at last. They've already done a bunch of motion-capture sessions with the likes of Rampage and Griffin, we're told, "to build photo-realistic in-game representations." Footage of the sessions - Rampage is pulling silly faces, the wag - is flashed up. And, to be fair, the likenesses are already highly impressive; easily on a par with any other sporting game we can think of. Abstract-number fans can console themselves with the knowledge that each fighter is made up of 30,000 polygons - we'll take their word for that - and in addition to today's special guests, the roster includes Chuck Liddell, BJ Penn, Anderson Silva, Ben Saunders, Jon Koppenhaver, Clay Guida, Cheick Kongo, and Martin Kampmann. "Over 80 fighters" in total, from "all five weight divisions".

And don't forget the "non-fighting personalities", which will include the real commentary team, the prick-teasing Octagon girls, and Dana White himself. Everyone's invited! "They've given us access to a lot of their other personalities: cut men, trainers... Everything that makes the UFC brand what it is, we get," so we're told. "We want to create that totally immersive experience where you're watching a pay-per-view event. We use the same graphics, the same camera angles."

All of which will be music to the cauliflowered ears of existing UFC fans. The growing popularity of the sport in the US is not in doubt. In Vegas, the forthcoming Jackson-Griffin battle seems to provoke similar levels of interest to a major football match on these shores, and a number of unprompted locals are super-keen to bend our ear with predictions.

Meanwhile, over in Britain, and again thanks almost exclusively to the TV show, UFC is enjoying a surge in popularity; but it's still clearly a far more niche proposition. Nevertheless, UK events routinely sell out and a Brit - Mancunian Michael Bisping - won the third season of The Ultimate Fighter, giving us a local champ to rally behind.

If Yuke's turns out a great game, that's not going to hurt the sport's progress. However, UFC's ability to continue capturing new British fans has been partially hamstrung by the recent channel-switch from the free-to-digital Bravo to the subscription-based Setanta - a move that has been criticised in some quarters as valuing short-term revenues over long-term growth (well, fancy!). No doubt it's a risky strategy for a sport to which maintaining and building momentum is vital.

But for Undisputed to succeed both home and away, it will need to entice fighting game fans to whom UFC means very little - although designer Omar Kendell thinks some of the work's already done. "The UK has a very long tradition of being very fighting game savvy," he tells us. "So those communities in particular - if you've been interested in the Tekkens and the Virtua Fighters - I think you'll find something to love. You'll definitely find the spiritual roots of those games in ours."

Conceptually, the UFC boasts the raw materials for a fantastic videogame translation: combatants are expert in a range of diverse styles including boxing, kickboxing, muay thai, judo, wrestling and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. And since this is mixed martial arts, the best fighters will be skilled in multiple disciplines making the nature of each contest inherently unpredictable. This is certainly reflected across the real-life bouts we witness in the Palms Resort. The first couple are thoroughly tedious affairs in which the fighters quickly collapse to the canvas in a clinch and remain there pretty much for the duration, writhing and twitching in the knotted limbs of homoerotic human spaghetti. It's not a million miles away from the naked wrestling scene in Borat.

But Diego Sanchez's welterweight face-off against Luigi Fioravanti is a thrilling advertisement. From the off, Sanchez wades in with a stunning onslaught of punches and kicks, but is unable to break the stubborn resilience of Fioravanti until a devastating TKO in the final round. It's a wince-inducing, brutal and bloody battle. The crowd, us included, go nuts.

In the game, the ebb and flow of each fight should be equally dynamic. "Players are constantly given the option of improving their position, going for submissions or inflicting damage," the product manager notes. This is what THQ is calling 'Constant Control' - a context-based system where a range of varied moves are available from any position. Punches from a distance will be different to those unleashed at close range; when you're right in your enemy's face you can try and force them into a number of clinches and takedowns.