You start out with a Gym with no fighters & a small amount of money. If you advance a day or two you will automatically gain students to your gym. The quality of your students depend on your gyms reputation. As a starting gym your reputation is unknown. There are ten levels of reputation, which will eventually rise with each successful fight & drop each time you lose but don't expect it to rise too quickly I've currently got a 29-5 record & are still on local (level 2) reputation. If you look on the tool bar at the top of the screen the second to last symbol on the right marked ? has some excellent information in it & is well worth a look. Two other things of note are Gym status & Equipment status. Gym status determines how many fighters you can train as well as the number of students & trainers you can have. Equipment status determines how quickly your fighters will improve through training. Your Gym starts out with level one (ramshackle) on both of these. Ramshackle Gym status means you can train one fighter plus have three students & one trainer but more on this later.

Having advanced a day or so you should now have at least one student. Go to the boxing gloves on the toolbar at the top of the screen (should be the 2nd on the left). You have the choice of Fighter Information, Student Information, Sparring, Training & Training Camps. Select Student Information. This will bring up a screen with your fighters information on it. On the right of the screen is personal information; Name, Nationality, Fighting Background (Boxing Style), Weight Class, Reputation, Birth date & Age. Most of this information should be fairly obvious, his Nationality determines which Region he will fight in. Boxing Style is important to determine which of his skills are most important but more on that later. There are 4 Boxing Styles; Boxer, Swarmer, Slugger & Counterpuncher. If you hold your mouse over the boxers Fighting background you get a brief summary of what his style means. On the right hand side of the screen is your fighters stats or skills. These are rated between 1-20 although a trait can raise it to 25. The skills are broken into 4 categories, Offense, Defense, Mental & Physical. I will summarize what skills are important to each style of fighting. I'll break skills into three tiers. 1st Tier is the most important through to the 3rd Tier being the least important.

Style: Boxer
1st Tier: Jab, Cross, Head Movement, Guard, Positioning, Speed
2nd Tier: Lead Hook, Body Movement, Clinch, Footwork, Timing, Adaptability, Discipline, Endurance, Recovery, Toughness
3rd Tier: Rear Hook, Uppercut, Aggression, Power

Style: Swarmer
1st Tier: Lead Hook, Rear Hook, Body Movement, Positioning, Endurance, Toughness
2nd Tier: Uppercut, Head Movement, Guard, Clinch, Timing, Aggression, Discipline, Power, Speed, Recovery
3rd Tier: Jab, Cross, Adaptability, Footwork

Style: Slugger
1st Tier: Rear Hook, Uppercut, Power, Endurance, Recovery, Toughness
2nd Tier: Jab, Cross, Lead Hook, Positioning, Clinch, Footwork, Timing, Aggression, Adaptability, Speed
3rd Tier: Discipline, Head Movement, Body Movement, Guard

Style: Counterpuncher
1st Tier: Timing, Adaptability, Discipline, Head Movement, Body Movement, Speed
2nd Tier: Jab, Cross, Lead Hook, Rear Hook, Uppercut, Footwork, Positioning, Power, Endurance, Recovery
3rd Tier: Guard, Clinch, Aggression, Toughness

I'll talk a little on what the various stats means for your fighter. If you are familiar with Boxing which I'd assume you are as this game isn't likely to appeal to anybody doesn't like or follow Boxing. Most of these are fairly self explanatory. Again if your move your mouse to hover over the relevant stat you'll get a brief description of what it means. Offensive skills are listed in order of most effective range from outside to inside. Thus an outside fighter would need a good jab & cross while an inside fighter would favour the uppercut & rear hook. Defensive skills are fairly obvious head & body movement are your dodge skills, guard is blocking, clinch is tying your opponent up & not letting him fight & footwork is movement. Mental skills are positioning which determines at what distance the fight is mostly fought. If you listen to many on the forum this is one of the most important skills for your boxer as it allows you to dictate the fight. The idea being that you are able to fight at the distance that suits your fighter most thus it may be possible to defeat a superior fighter by using your strengths & exploiting his weaknesses. More on this later when we talk about Fight tactics. This is especially true for the Boxer & Swarmer but not so much for the Counterpuncher who generally fights on his opponents terms but uses timing & good defense to "counter" his opponent. Timing & Aggression are fairly obvious & don't require much explanation. Adaptability is the boxers ability to adapt to his opponents tactics during a fight as well as being less predictable himself more on this in Fight Tactics. Discipline is ability to listen to Fight instructions from you the Manager & also effects how fast he improves via training. Physical skills, power is as you would expect how hard you hit. Speed effects dodges, counters & punch accuracy. Endurance effects fatigue, an fatigued fighter gets a penalty to his skills. This is something you need to watch during a fight as your more skillful fighter can dominate early but then tire & then lose the fight to an otherwise inferior but with higher Endurance fighter. I haven't found this to be a major issue but it's worth keeping note of when deciding on your Fight Tactics. This recently happened to me with my best fighter who has poor endurance was winning his most recent fight easily (He's a Boxer with 16 Jab & 20 Cross but only 3 endurance) & he started to tire noticeably in the last few rounds leading to an 10th round knockout by his "inferior" opponent. Recovery & Toughness are as you would expect.

Having an now an idea on what's important for each fighter will give you an idea on whether a fighter is worth training or not. Your initial fighters are not going to be very good at least to start with. If you can get a Fighter with at least two 13+ skills & 9+ for the rest of his key abilities for his style he might be worth looking at but be warned he will likely have several skills under 5. I guess there is no perfect formulae for the perfect fighter so go with whichever looks the best to you. It might take a few attempts to get the right fighter but with time & training they will improve. Boxers seem to be the style of choice for most on the forum, I've so far trained both Boxers & Swarmers with some success but I intend to try a counterpuncher next. Not so sure about Sluggers at the moment they are all about brute force & are not very good at defending themselves. They seem to be an all or nothing option, either they knock their opponent out or they lose. To me they are the weakest style. I'd recommend to avoid Sluggers at least at first they might be more viable when your gym has a higher reputation thus higher quality students. Better to have more reliable fighters who through careful choice of opponent & using the appropriate fight tactics you should be able grind out a few wins & raise your gyms reputation rather than the hit or miss nature of the slugger at least for your 1st Fighter. You'll likely have these initial fighters for at least the first couple of years before your reputation rises high enough to get more highly skilled students to choose from so don't make a rushed decision. I'd recommend to wait till at least you get your second student before choosing to train one professionally. Remember you can have up to three students but you only get one student join at a time & sometimes even if you have an open slot it can take two to three days to fill.

So you've got a student or two what next? If you look at the bottom middle of the screen there are two buttons you can press. Either train student professionally & cut student. The first option is as it says this is the guy you will be training so be careful who you choose. You can retire them later if you choose but better to choose the right guy 1st time rather wasting time chopping & changing who you train. Once you've made your choice stick with it. There isn't a huge difference between your early trainees & if you've chosen carefully its highly unlikely that you'll get a significantly better student until you've raised your gym's reputation. Another thing to consider when choosing is the Fighters natural weight. Theses weights are in Ib (pounds). If a Fighter has to lose more than 10Ib to make weight chances are he won't fight as much so won't get as much experience (you get experience through training, sparring & actual fights) the more fights the quicker he improves also the less time in train camp (training camp is the only way to lose weight & improvements are not permanent) the more time training the quicker he improves. More fights also means more money to improve your gym. The Target weights (in pounds) are the following; Heavy Weight 265, Cruiser Weight 200, Light Heavy 175, Super Middleweight 168, Middleweight 160, Super Welterweight 154, Welterweight 147, Super Lightweight 140, Lightweight 135, Super Featherweight 130 & Featherweight 126. The second option is to cut the student. It's very tempting to keep cutting students I know I did but you don't get anything much better. My two best fighters are the first two I trained. They're not anything special but both have a natural weight close to their target weight thus spend more time training & fighting. While the improvement is only marginally better than my fighters that spend more time in training camp it does allow for quicker improvement of your gym through extra money from more fights also training camp cost money shorter training camps means less expense. Keep in mind until you improve your gym status you can only train 3 students. If you haven't chosen a fighter to train & you have the full quota of 3 students you won't get another until you either decide to train one of them or cut one of them. Once you've chosen a fighter to train you will now find him under Fighter information rather than Student information. This screen is much the same as the Student one but for several differences. The most obvious is you can now look at his professional record in the middle of the screen. You will also note that you may change his name. You can also change weight class, export the fighter & retire him. I really don't recommend change weight class as there is a significant drop in offensive skills & no increases to compensate you'd be better off retiring the fighter in my opinion than changing weight class especially this early in his career. I'm not sure what exporting your fighter is about & I'd only retire a fighter as a last resort or if you had a significantly better fighter to replace him with.

You've chosen your Fighter to train now what? Before we go to matchmaking & organize a fight it's best to explain Sparring & Training. Sparring; as soon as you have two active (you may not spar with a fighter who is currently injured) fighters either Pro or student you may spar with them. Weight class is ignored. Each fighter may only spar once per session & must wait at least three days before he may spar again. For each sparring session the fighter gains experience much as he would in an actual fight although he only gets experience in his tier 1 skills. Experience is between 0-20 experience points per sparring session but I don't know how many exp is required to raise a stat. Exp for actual fights are much higher depending on how well you performed & how long the fight lasted while sparring exp seems a little more random. Another reason to spar is to discover Natural Traits. The only way to discover Natural Traits is by either Sparring or Actual Fights. The chance to discover a trait is very low (something like 1 in 50) so you will need many sparring sessions before your Fighter gains a Trait. Traits as far as I can tell are random. There is no negative to sparring, your fighter can't get hurt (as far as I know), it has no affect on Fighter fatigue. You can spar on the day you Fighter is due to have a Fight & it has no negative effect on him so there is no reason not to Spar as often as you can. It should be mentioned that Sparring has no effect on weight loss as this is done through training camp (you can still spar during training camp). Sparring is all about gaining exp for stat improvement & discovering natural traits. Also it is the only way for your students to gain exp as they don't train or have any actual Fights (beyond sparring) as your pros do. Next is training, unless your fighter is either injured or in a training camp you should always train your fighter. In the middle of the screen under your boxers list of skills is Tactical training. There are 6 choices, Boxer, Swarmer, Slugger, Counterpuncher, Balanced & Rest. Never choose rest as a fighters fatigue is not effected by training. The training that suits your Fighters style would seem to most likely to suit him as it emphasizes improvement in his Tier 1 skills (these are the green skills) but ignores his Tier 3 skills (those in red). The downside of this is he will actually go backwards in his Tier 3 skills. I would recommend to train balanced as it improves all of his skills admittedly at a very slow rate but not significantly slower than the more specialized choice. It might be worth trying specialized training when your equipment status has been raised but in these early days you cannot afford your fighter to decrease in skill in anything as many of these skills will be 5 or under & are already a real weakness. Far better to take the slow but steady improvement that balanced gives rather than the slightly higher increase in some skills & a drop in others. Also if you are sparring regularly you will improve more quickly in Tier 1 skills anyway thus Sparring & Fighting are the main ways of gaining exp for your fighter. On the right-hand side of the screen is this fighters current % progression to the next skill level. The only other item of significance is the begin training camp button which will only appear once your fighter has booked a Fight.

So now you got a Fighter to train, have selected his training & are regularly sparring with him. It's now time to organize your first Professional Fight. Go to matchmaking (The Clipboard symbol on the top toolbar), Weight class will default to your Fighters natural weight class, for this guide we won't go into fighting at different weights so leave this one alone for now. Next your default region will depend on your Fighters nationality. You may not fight outside of your region until you reach Respectable Opponent Marketing level (level 5) & that's a long way off & beyond the scope of this guide. So with your weight class & region already chosen for you the next is a list of possible opponents that you may challenge. scroll down this list, you will notice that his skills are shown on the right hand side of the screen, while your fighters are on the left. This makes it easy to decide if this is an appropriate matchup for your fighter. Unfortunately you cannot tell from this screen the ranking of an opponent although you can see their reputation which should give you an idea. I would really suggest not biting off more than you can chew, at least for your fighters first few fights try to match him against opponents that you think he can defeat worry about taking better opponents when you have a better grasp of how this game works. You will only be able to challenge opponents who don't already have a fight scheduled, those fighters won't show up on the scroll down list until after he's had his scheduled fight. Once you've decided on an opponent you want to challenge, you will need to select match type. You have 4 choices, Title Fight, Main Event, Co-Main Event & Undercard. Title Fight is when you fighter either challenges or defends a Title, Main Event is when your fighter is the headline event. Co-Main Event & Undercard can only be booked on a preexisting event. I'm not sure the difference between the two as I haven't been able to book a Co-Main Event as most pre-existing events already have one booked. So choose Undercard until your Fighter is of high enough reputation to warrant headlining. Next you need to select the event date drop down box for a preexisting event. Then you need to choose an guaranteed payout, default is 100. Stick with the default for your first few fights, don't be worried if this seems too low as the real money is made through marketing. Last is the PPV/Network Split ignore this as it's only relevant if your Fight is the Main event. Once you sent the challenge you'll need to advance to the next day & check you inbox which is on the Left hand home icon under Gym information. It's worth mentioning that there's a fair chance that your fighter will receive a challenge from another Fighter. These are received also via the inbox. You don't have to accept these instantly so I'd checkout the other fighter using the matchmaker screen & if you like what you see accept the fight.

You've got a fight setup so now it's time to go to Marketing. Marketing is on the same tab as Matchmaking but at the bottom of that list. You will get a list of Networks that you can offer a chance to host your Fight. Each network has a nationality, region, reach, subscriptions, plus stats for Advertising, Hype, Viewer Loyalty & Subscription fee. Generally you cannot get an Network outside of your region to host your Fight although I have had the odd one accept an hosting offer but it is rare so best to concentrate of only those in your region. Reach is the size of the network, how much of a potential audience it has (its reputation). The 10 levels of reach are Unknown, Obscure, Niche, Local, Growing, State/Province, National, Regional, Global & Elite. Subscriptions are the total number of viewers the network has. So while Reach & Subscriptions will determine the base for how much you will make for the fight, the networks stats will modify it. Advertising I'd guess is how well it promotes your fight to its viewers, Hype is well...Hype! How excited its viewers are about your upcoming fight. More Hype will increase your fighters reputation/marketability increase/decrease depending on whether he wins or loses. Viewer Loyalty will determine how consistent the amount of money you'll make from fights hosted by the Network. Subscription fee is how much does the network charge. Naturally higher values in these stats will boost your return. The reach of the Network should roughly match the Marketability (reputation) of your fighter. Thus a Fighter with Rising Star (level 3) reputation should be able to engage a network with a reach of Niche. Although this will be modified by your opponent, so if your opponent is an unknown you might only be able to get an Obscure or even Unknown Network to agree to host the fight. Likewise a higher rated opponent might allow for an larger Network to accept resulting in a bigger payday. Early fights hosted by an unknown Network will likely net you $10,000-$30,000 per fight. Lastly but most importantly is the Network fee. This can be a bit tricky to figure out at first & you probably need to experiment a bit to work out what's the right amount to pay. I generally found $250-$500 for unknown, $750-$1000 for Obscure & $2000 for Niche but these can vary considerably. I've only just started to get Local networks to agree to Host my fights so I'm not sure what fee they require but it seems to be around the $4000 mark. It's worth noting although it's really out of the scope of this guide once you start headlining events (Main Event) & asking for a split of the PPV it makes it harder to get some networks to Host your fight. While this tends to double or triple the amount you might make Networks aren't very interested in your fight if your opponent is two or more levels lower than you in rep. Due to this I wouldn't recommend choosing a Main Event until your fighter is at least of Rising Star Reputation & your opponent is no more than one level of reputation lower than you.

Next is Training camps. You've booked a Fight, got an network to host the event. You now need to send your fighter off to training camp. There are two reasons for training camp. The first & most important is to get your fighter to the target weight. Training camp is the only way for your fighter to lose weight. Some Fighters are better than others at reaching their target weight. The closer their natural weight is to their target weight the better as the less time they need to spend in Training Camp. If you're not sure how long to go into training camp generally 1 month before their next fight is a good default. If a fighter cannot reach his target weight in a month he's probably not worth persevering with. After two or three fights you should have a good idea on how long he requires to be in Training camp for. In general its worth giving your fighters a little more time than required to make their target weight as there is nothing more annoying than having to reschedule a fight due to missing the target weight by a pound or less. The second reason is training is much faster in training camp. The two downsides of training camp are Training improvements are temporary & each day you spend in training camp there is a cost. You also need to watch your fighters fatigue. The more fatigued your fighter the less he gains from training camp, not sure if it effects your fatigue levels for your upcoming fight but I'd assume that it does (I haven't tested this theory yet) so you will need to rest occasionally to allow your fatigue to return to maximum. How much you get back from rest is random but on average you get about 20 points back per rest day. Weight loss is continuous & doesn't seem to be effected by resting. Trainers are only used in Training camp, they boost training gains depending on their skills but they don't seem to serve any other purpose. I'd recommend avoid hiring one early game. Training camp automatically ends once you've had your fight, your Fighter goes back to normal training, although you will need reselect his Tactical Training as he will otherwise be resting. If a fighter picked up an injury during his last fight you won't be able to train him until the designated date that he recovers from his injury shown in his Fighter Information. You may still Spar whilst in Training Camp, it doesn't affect Fighters fatigue so there's is no reason not to. I'm not sure if experience gained sparring while in training camp is temporary or permanent I'd assume it's still permanent.

Finally we've gotten to the big day, your Fighters 1st fight but what do we do. The screen is exactly the same as sparring only you can only Sim each round rather than the whole fight. Whilst I'm not expert I shall try to discuss my limited understanding on Fight Tactics. First thing you should do is before the fight compare the two Fighters & note down your fighters strengths & your opponents weaknesses & try to exploit them. Adaptability can be important stat as the higher the skill the the quicker he will adapt to his opponents tactics during the fight. Against an opponent with low Adaptability you can reuse the same tactics without much fear that he'll be able to counter it whilst if he has a high skill you will constantly need to change tactics otherwise you'll become too predictable. Also your Fighters Discipline will influence how well he carries out your instructions. Positioning & Footwork are important for your fighter to be able to keep the Fight on their terms & "Boss" the Fight. These skills only have to be higher than your opponents in order to get some benefit. If your Fighter is better on the outside than your opponent it would make sense to try to keep the fight at a distance rather than go toe to toe & slug it out where your opponent is superior. The first sets of instructions are to use one of the various punches more. If your Fighter has one punch that is far better than the others why not try to use it more, the down side is your opponent will likely start watching out for that punch if your overuse it. Using this tactic is excellent against an opponent will low adaptability as mentioned earlier but needs to be used with caution against an opponent with a high adaptability. The next instruction is to watch out for a certain punch; not a tactic that I use much but if you notice that your opponent hitting constantly with a certain punch or it's late in the fight & your opponent has a killer uppercut, power & needs a knockout might be worth using this instruction but be warned if you do you are a little more susceptible to his other punches. Hit him with all you've got; again another tactic that I don't use much, your fighter throws more power punches trying to knock his opponent out. I'd only consider doing this if I had my opponent on the ropes or was truly desperate & needed a knockout to win. More likely to get your own Fighter KO'd as he quickly tires so I'd only use this if I was winning easily or had nothing to lose. Stick & Move; Throwing rapid combinations & then go on the defense. A tactic that I use every now & them, not sure how effect it is. Good for an outside Fighter with good timing & speed. Overwhelm him; throw more leather at your opponent than he does at you. Sounds like the sort of tactic that would work for a swarmer & maybe a slugger. Not a tactic I use much but if you're getting out pointed it might be worth a try possibly with stand & trade. Go for the head; If you're looking for a knockout or your opponent is weak on Head Movement its worth using. Also if your opponent has a low Toughness & or you have decent power. Work the Body; Good for tiring you opponent out. I use this one alot especially if my opponent has better endurance than my fighter I figure if I can tire him out it evens things out (both fighters are exhausted so neither has the advantage) & if my fighters a little more skillful he should win. Also good to use if your opponent has low body movement. Stay back don't get trapped; If your fighters a Boxer & better on the outside than his opponent then this is a good one to use. Probably needs good positioning & footwork. Use the ropes; not a tactic I'd use I have visions of Ali's rope-a-dope against Foreman but seems like an desperation tactic you'd use to withstand an onslaught. Cut off the ring; The opposite to Stay back I'd guess. I use this alot for my swarmer. Useful for getting inside. Bob & weave don't get hit; as it says a good tactic if your Fighter has good movement skills as it increases your dodge. Not something I've used much as none of my fighters have good movement in both body & head plus it seems a waste of a good guard skill. Stand & Trade; pretty much as you'd think. A good tactic to use if your are behind on points or are looking for an KO especially if your opponents got low toughness. Wait for an opening; Sounds like the ideal tactic for an Counterpuncher. I'd think Timing & Speed would be the key stats to get the best out of this tactic. Haven't use this one much but could have its uses. Tie his hands up; If your way ahead on points & have a decent clinch skill or just want to survive the onslaught I guess you could try this tactic. Not a tactic that I've tried as I don't have anybody with a good clinch maybe a tactic for a slugger or swarmer but seems more like a desperation tactic to me.

Almost done but before I sign off I'd like to talk a little about upgrading your gym. So you've got a few fights under your belt & some hard earned money in the bank. Where to spend it first? There are two things that you can use money to upgrade, Gym status & Equipment status. Gym status determines how many Fighters you can train, while Equipment status effects how quickly your Fighters gain experience through training. To me the maximum number of Fighters you will want to train early on is no more than 3, anymore & the game gets tedious at least early on. Once you've established your fighters you might want to train more but the first 3-4 years while you are establishing yourself I would think 2-3 Fighters would be the ideal. With this in mind you do probably want as your first improvement to improve Gym status so you get that 2nd Fighter (a third is optional but I'd do that as my 3rd or 4th improvement) & start doubling your money after that I would focus on improving your equipment status. I wouldn't consider a 4th Fighter until my Gym's reputation has improved considerably (at least National or Regional) but by this time you should have a pretty good handle on the game & known what you like & can make these decisions on what suits you. Good luck & may you win many titles but most importantly have fun.