Every mechanic in MMA Promoter
MMA Promoter is a management sim: you run the promotion, you never step into the cage. Here is the whole machine as it stands today — every system the game currently simulates.
Starting out
Take over one of ten existing promotions, or found your own on a shoestring ($150k), a standard budget ($500k) or investor money ($1.5M). Then decide how much you are allowed to know: Fog of War hides outsiders' attributes until your scouts dig them out; Open shows everything and leaves scouting as a shortcut. That one choice sets the difficulty of every decision after it.
The world you inherit
2,332 fighters across eight divisions, ten promotions in three tiers, training gyms and coaches, six regional markets — and five years of history simulated before you arrive. Records, title reigns, rankings, rivalries and reputations all actually happened, fight by fight. Nothing waits for you either: rival promotions announce their own cards weeks ahead, sign and cut fighters, and rise or fall between tiers on their own.
The week
The game moves one week at a time, and advancing it runs everything at once: training and progression, injuries healing, careers ageing, contracts ticking down, rankings moving, scouts working, bills paid, and every rival show due that week resolved. What happened lands in your inbox.
Booking a show
The event planner is the core loop. Pick a show type, pick a week, name it — or let the naming recipe number the series for you — then build the card: a main card and prelims, with opponents suggested by division, rank, availability and how interesting the fight is. Title bouts are rule-checked as you book them: one belt per division per card, and an interim belt is offered only when the champion genuinely cannot defend. Announce it and it goes on the shared calendar, where you can still edit it up to fight week — and where rival promotions can see which week you took.
Fight night
Every bout is simulated beat by beat out of the fighters' attributes: no scripted outcome, no coin flip. They fight for distance across four ranges, throw weapon by weapon (each with its own accuracy), clinch, shoot takedowns that need real setup first, pass guard, hunt named submissions, and hurt each other in ways that accumulate. A knockdown leaves a man stunned, and the fighter standing over him has to choose whether to dive in. Fights end by KO, TKO, doctor stoppage, submission or the judges — three of them, round by round, and close rounds are genuinely close. You watch it as live play-by-play with combinations narrated, then read the full stat line: significant and total strikes, accuracy, takedowns, control time, scorecards.
The fighters
Every fighter carries over fifty rated numbers — punching, kicking, clinch, wrestling, ground, submissions broken down by type, cardio, chin, heart, fight IQ — plus a personality (professionalism, ambition, loyalty, temperament, charisma) and traits like Power Puncher or Relentless Takedowns. The fight engine reads those numbers directly. They also move: fighters grow towards a fixed ceiling, peak around 27 to 30, then decline at a rate their determination resists, and their gym, their coaches, their morale and how often they fight all bend the curve.
Scouting
In Fog of War you do not see a stranger's ratings — you see what your scouting department has earned. Hire scouts from a live market or poach one from a rival, pay them weekly, and put them on a division or on a single fighter you want followed. Their read sharpens in four steps: archetype and a star rating, then an overall band, then potential, then tight numbers with written notes. An estimate is fixed the moment it is drawn, so reloading never re-rolls it — and when a scout finds an 80-rated fighter nobody has heard of, he tells you.
Contracts and the market
Sign free agents, negotiate salary, length and win bonus, renew before a deal lapses, or cut a fighter and pay the severance. Prying someone off a rival's roster is a release request the owning promotion can refuse outright — champions and their best are not for sale — or grant for a settlement fee. You can pre-agree terms with a fighter for the day he reaches free agency, and the big promotions will come for your own stars: bank the fee and let him go, or refuse and live with how he takes it. A deal that runs out unrenewed walks out of the door on its own.
Man management
Fighters have morale, and a relationship with you personally, and both are earned. Talk to them, keep or break the title shot you promised, pay generously or squeeze, fine them or let it go — every interaction is written into that fighter's relations file, and it changes how fast he improves, what he wants to be paid, and whether a rival's offer turns his head.
Rankings and belts
Each division runs a transparent Elo ladder — a champion and fifteen contenders — and every point of movement is itemised: opponent quality, finishing method, how big the fight was, the opponent's form, your own activity. The winner always ends up ranked above the man he just beat. Sit out and the rating decays; sit out two years and you drop off the ladder. Belts have real rules too: an interim title when a champion cannot defend, a unification bout when the two finally meet, promotion of the interim champion if the belt falls vacant, and a title stripped from anyone who wins it after missing weight.
Fight week
Booking a fighter puts him in an eight-week camp, and camps go wrong — one injury draw per camp, decided the moment you pick the date, so planning ahead is never punished. He trains through it, carries it into the cage as a real penalty, or withdraws and pulls the bout. Then the scale: cut size, stress and professionalism decide who misses weight, and a miss means a fine credited to your promotion or a catchweight, a drained fighter carrying a cardio penalty into the fight, and a belt he can no longer legally win. Lose enough bouts off the card and the show is cancelled.
The books
You pay weekly overhead, fighter salaries, show purses, win bonuses and scout wages; you take gate money that depends on how big the fight actually is, plus broadcast money that depends on your tier. You also set the promotion's performance-bonus policy: pay above the going rate for the night's best fight and the fighters remember it, pay nothing and everyone on the card remembers that too. Running out of money is your problem, not the game's.
Fame and the press
Fame is regional. A fighter can be a name in Latin America and a nobody in Asia, and his world standing is the market-weighted average of the six regions. Your promotion works the same way — the region you run a show in is the region that hears about it — and it is popularity that moves you between the three tiers, in both directions. Your tier then sets your overhead, your card sizes, your broadcast money and who is willing to sign for you. All of it is reported in the FightPulse feed: results, upsets, signings, title changes, rumours.
Gyms, staff and the advisor
Fighters train at gyms with their own tier, facilities and coaching staff, and the specialists there bend what their fighters get better at. Your own building is staffed too — scouts today, analysts to sharpen the advice. And the Advisor reads the whole roster for you: who needs attention first, what each fighter should be training, whether the division still fits, whether the contract is worth renewing, who to book him against next, and when it is time to go and talk to him.
That is the game as it stands today. The alpha opens on Friday 28 August 2026.