• by Aaron Baar , March 11, 2011

EA Sports exposes the dark side of boxing -- including jail time, drug addiction and hangers-on -- for the latest iteration of its "Fight Night" title.

The new title, "Fight Night Champion," marks a departure for the franchise by depicting a story mode in which players can play the role of a fictional character who experiences the ups and downs of professional boxing, including dealing with unscrupulous managers, sycophants, and even - in the story at least -- jail time.

"This is the first time 'Fight Night' has built in a story mode where you play a character who goes through the ups and downs of [a boxing career]," Eddie Garabedian, an account director with Heat, the San Francisco agency behind the campaign, tells Marketing Daily. "What we're trying to do is bridge the real stories of the boxers and the story in the game."

The six-minute documentary videos feature boxers ranging from Mike Tyson to Tommy Morrison to Joe Frazier. The videos, which do require age-verification sign-in, show Tyson commenting on prison ("You see anything. You see your best friend perform [censored] on somebody. Don't be surprised."), Morrison describing the sport as "rippin' the spirit out of a man," and Frazier going down his resume, listing knockout after knockout. Each of the videos end with a preview trailer of the game. The title of the documentary series, "Still Standing," gets to the heart of the entire campaign, Garabedian says.

"It's a metaphor that they've been through a lot, but the heart of a champion shines through," he says. The campaign, which only has a $1.85 million budget and targets males 12-45, is supported through banner advertising on Web sites such as ESPN, IGN and gamespot.com. The game and the campaign also have their own dedicated Facebook page. EA and Heat worked with Vice magazine to create the content for the videos.