This week, Brock Lesnar was revealed as the cover athlete for this year's edition of UFC Undisputed. The freak of nature is the current Heavyweight champion, and even though he's been out of action with a terrible sickness these past few months, he's still one of the most recognizable faces and names in MMA today. Sure, that's largely due to his time spent as a wrestler in the WWE, but the man's dominance over his weight division in unquestionable. In addition to announcing the game's cover star, THQ also revealed some more information via an interview with Gamespot about what gamers can expect from this year's iteration of the best-selling MMA title.

First and foremost, for create-a-player, they've lifted the restrictions on fight camps. What that means is instead of only being able to choose two fighting styles to continually train in, players will be able to workout particular aspects of their game, like certain chokes or throws, with a specific camp. It appears you'll be able to switch camps as often as you like, which is a huge benefit in adding to the realism of the game. Submissions have been slightly reworked, but not completely. THQ has ditched the button-mashing escape, but retained the analog stick spinning. They've actually changed the way the game decides how easily a fighter is able to escape by calculating stamina and submission defense more actively than how great a player is at flicking the stick. I never really cared for the way submissions were handled, but if Yukes has that much faith in the control scheme, perhaps I should give them another chance to prove me wrong.

In my opinion, the most important addition to this year's game will be full cage support. Here's how the cage will come into play according to one of the game's designers, Omar Kendall.

"If one fighter manages to push his opponent up against the cage, he'll restrict his movement, limit the force he's able to generate on his strikes, and make it harder for him to regain energy; thus, shifting the balance in the favor of the free-standing fighter. It's an elegant system that we feel accurately represents the strategies employed in a real UFC fight."

To me, that sounds like exactly what the first game was missing. Cage offense/defense is a huge part of the real deal, and if they're able to come up with a way to accurately represent that in the game, I'll be stoked. I'm also looking forward to the new fight styles the game will be implementing. Adding to the six styles from last year will be karate, Greco-Roman wrestling, and sambo, which should give gamers plenty of options for creating some incredibly well-rounded created fighters. The most surprising new feature happens to coincide with Yukes' commitment to robust online experiences: online fight camps. When prompted to speak about this new clan-like feature, Kendall said, "Players can even bring in their Career mode fighters for an online training session to train with other players and get an extra career 'cred' boost. Those boosts make better fighters and those better fighters make better camps." Sounds like the Gamervision Top Team will be taking on all comers this summer. We're taking applications now.

I was pretty skeptical about the need for another UFC game so soon, but after hearing about these improvements to the core game, I'm actually excited. THQ has promised a few more unrevealed upgrades will be slowly unveiled as we get closer to the game's release, and I'm looking forward to each and every one of them.