Bruce Lee Never Fought in the UFC, Yet He's the UFC Game's Most-Used Fighter

Electronic Arts today shared an infographic full of figures regarding player habits in EA Sports UFC since its release a month ago. More interesting to me than the millions of fights that have taken place is the fact that the fighter who's been used the most is the one who's never actually fought in the UFC: Bruce Lee.

Lee, the actor and martial artist, has been chosen 3.41 million times in the game's first month of availability. That puts him just ahead of some of the sport's biggest names, Jon "Bones" Jones and Georges St-Pierre, both of whom have been played 3.4 million times. From there it's a big drop off, with Anderson Silva being the only other person to be played as more than 3 million times.

It's noteworthy that Lee is the top fighter given that he isn't someone you can access right out of the gate (unless you preordered). To unlock him, you need to either finish the game's career mode on the hard difficulty or pay for access to him ($2 per weight class, or $6 to get him in four weight classes).

Beyond that, there's that point about how not only did he never fight in the UFC, he never even heard of it--the UFC wasn't founded until 20 years after his death. Additionally, Lee never fought competitively. This was the source of some UFC fans' complaints when Lee was announced as a fighter in the game earlier this year. When GameSpot spoke with his daughter, Shannon Lee, at the time, she had what I think was the right attitude by realizing this is about fun. "[T]his isn't real life; this is fun, Bruce Lee liked to have fun," she said. "This is an opportunity to live out a fighting fantasy. And I think we should all be grateful that the technology exists to have some fun in this way."

That said, not anyone would necessarily be allowed in a UFC game just because it would be fun. UFC president Dana White recently said he'd be okay with Chuck Norris, but ruled out the likes of Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Arnold Schwarzenegger's version of Hercules. (The Rock's version, on the other hand, would be fine.)

You can check out EA's infographic on UFC--highlighting the 65.7 million fights that have taken place, and the fact that the side control kimura is the preferred submission of gamers--below.