Oleksandr Usyk has revealed his ESBC character model ahead of his fight with Anthony Joshua.
'The Cat' is set to face 'AJ' later tonight in Saudi Arabia. The bout will be a rematch of their previous encounter in September 2021. In that outing, Usyk walked in as an underdog and left as the heavyweight champion after scoring a decision victory.
Ahead of the rematch, a lot has changed between the two men. Usyk comes in fired up after having served on the frontlines of the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Meanwhile, Joshua comes in having left his longtime trainer in favor of Robert Garcia.
With all the changes and the enomirty of the fight for the heavyweight division, the matchup is one that has a lot of fan interest. Another boxing-related story that has a lot of fan interest is the upcoming Esports Boxing Club video game. The game, expected to be released sometime next year, is the first major boxing title in over a decade.
Now fans have another reason to be excited about the title. On Instagram, Oleksandr Usyk announced that he was in the upcoming ESBC video game. He further shared screenshots of his character model.
The model looks good, which isn't a shock given the amount of detail the development team has spent on the boxers in-game. While the graphics don't look stunning, the game is still in development and will likely massively improve before release.
See Usyk's Instagram post about ESBC below:
What other boxers are in the ESBC video game?
Oleksandr Usyk is just one boxer on the stacked ESBC roster.
The boxing video game genre has been dead for years now. The last major title released in the genre was Fight Night Champion, which was released in March 2011. Since then, EA Sports has focused on UFC titles instead.
To fill the gap, Steel City Interactive announced Esports Boxing Club in 2020. The news on the title was hard to find for a long time. This is because the development team just worked on fine tuning gameplay and securing the rights to boxers.
That hard work has paid off, however, as the last few months have seen the team release gameplay. They've also announced that many big names are set for the release. The title is expected to have some of the biggest names in the sport's history.
The game currently has over 100 boxers. Names such as Muhammad Ali, Canelo Alvarez, Tyson Fury, Deontay Wilder, and more are in the title. However, the roster is still expected to grow.