We all know Fight Night and UFC are two rather successful franchises within the sports-gaming industry. These games give gamers a chance to create themselves in an environment that would be nothing more than a pipe dream if it were transferred to real life. Nevertheless, if you put your mind to it, worked your ass off and trained every day, your pipe dream could come true, and you could be in the ring or octagon before you could say Tito Ortiz.

But can you burn in Hell, put on a yellow mask and become Scorpion from Midway’s Mortal Kombat? Can you hop into an orange jumpsuit and bust out a Kamehameha wave and call yourself Goku? No, it won’t happen outside of your dreams.

The point is simple, an underlying lack of realism negates the opportunity for all fighting games to be considered sports games.

Without some semblance of realism, it is tough to deem all fighting games as sports games. Yes, there are games out there like Mutant League Football and Blitz, but those games are based off of an already well-known sport. On the other hand, fighting has been stuck in limbo for years. Unless it is sanctioned, fighting has been considered a hooligan’s activity for behind bars and outside of school. People are punished for fighting if it is not sanctioned, but if a couple of friends played a pick-up game of hoops no harm would be done.

With sanctioned fighting becoming a more popular sport, especially with UFC starting to pick up even more followers, game companies such as EA and THQ have been pulling out their hair attempting to make the perfect fighting game. EA has a successful Fight Night franchise to sell every couple of years, but the company decided to take a step into the octagon once THQ made some dough with UFC Undisputed.

EA MMA was deemed a solid attempt for the first game in a new series, but THQ's UFC Undisputed still reigned supreme in the sales department. Regardless, another thing that sets these games apart from arcade fighters is the fact that career modes exist in these titles.

Allocate 10 points for right jab, five points for left hook and five points for fireball. Wait, what?

In games like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, careers don’t exist outside of a win-loss record. You are given one to two paragraphs of background info on the fighters and why they want to kill whatever evil boss is in the game. There are also endless combos to learn to obliterate your opponent in less than a minute, something that you would never see Floyd Mayweather Jr. do (he opts to run in circles). But in all seriousness, the style of fighting in arcade games just does not mesh with real fighting.

This debate comes up now since the arcade style is coming back into fashion. With recent releases of highly anticipated games like Marvel vs. Capcom and Mortal Kombat, gamers across the world are putting down their boxing legacies to go send Galactus -- and his Bible full of cheats -- to a place where the sun don't shine.

So until Bruce Lee comes back from the dead and gives me his best Liu Kang impression, I refuse to place Mortal Kombat next to my copy of NBA 2K11. Until Ryu stops spamming the hadouken blasts, Street Fighter will never be in the company of Madden. Even if you can throw a punch and be crowned world champion, it does not mean that you’re the next cover athlete for Fight Night Round 6.

Bruce...Bruce is that you?

But I will admit it would be pretty friggin' cool to be a lightning god.


Dustin Toms is a staff writer at Operation Sports, specializing in basketball games. Born and raised in Washington state, he has made his life goal to personally see to David Stern's firing after the Seattle SuperSonics were relocated. Follow him on Twitter @DustinToms_OS.