When most people think of esports, they picture players sitting behind monitors tapping keyboards and controllers. At a recent Global Gaming League event, the competitors were throwing real punches instead, while immersed in VR.
Misfits Boxing champion Chase DeMoor stepped into a VR ring to fight podcast host Gillie da Kid live in The Thrill of the Fight 2, turning a virtual boxing game into a physical match played in front of an audience.
K. Guillory
The crowd jeered and cheered much like fans at a live boxing event, reacting to every punch thrown in the virtual ring. Both competitors, wearing Meta Quest 3 headsets, traded blows for several rounds before DeMoor finally landed a knockout. By the end, both fighters were breathing heavily and drenched in sweat. The crowd roared its approval.
“When the punches started flying you could feel the crowd react to every hit,” said Global Gaming League founder Clinton Sparks.
In that moment, VR boxing worked as a live spectacle.
The match was part of an event hosted by the Global Gaming League, an organization trying to rethink what competitive gaming can look like for live audiences. Sparks prefers the term “gaming entertainment” rather than esports to describe the league’s format. While the lineup also included traditional titles like Call of Duty, Tekken, and Tetris, the VR boxing match closed out the evening as the main event. Instead of watching players hunched over controllers, the audience saw live competitors ducking, weaving, and throwing real punches as their avatars fought inside the virtual ring.
“We wanted something that felt physical and exciting for people watching in the room,” Sparks said. “VR boxing gave us that.”
“Most esports are fun if you’re playing them, but they can be harder for a live crowd to connect with,” Sparks said. “With VR boxing, people immediately understand what they’re watching.”
The game used in the match, The Thrill of the Fight 2, is a VR boxing game designed to track real punches, head movement, and defensive actions from players inside the headset. Unlike arcade-style fighting games controlled with buttons, competitors must physically move, throw punches, and pace themselves throughout the match. That physical element is a big reason the game works in a live event setting, where audiences can see the action.
Edward Vasquez, creative director on The Thrill of the Fight 2, said seeing the game used in a live competitive setting was a different experience from watching players compete online or at home.
“From the beginning we thought this could work as an esport because it’s so tactile and easy for people to understand when they watch it,” Vasquez said.
For professional boxer Chase DeMoor, it stopped feeling like a novelty pretty quickly. Inside the headset, the fight turned into a physically demanding contest.
“I was sweating way more than I expected,” DeMoor said. “You think it’s just a game until you’re in there throwing punches.”
“It’s actually a workout,” DeMoor told me. “You’re moving, you’re throwing punches, you’re ducking. After a few rounds you’re breathing hard.”
“After a couple rounds you forget it’s a game,” he added. “You’re just trying not to gas out.”
Unlike traditional fighting games where players rely on controllers, The Thrill of the Fight 2 requires competitors to throw real punches and move their bodies throughout the match. By the final rounds, both fighters were breathing heavily after trading punches in the virtual ring.
For DeMoor, that physical effort made the experience feel closer to a real competition than a typical video game. As a professional boxer, he said the game captures more of boxing’s movement and rhythm than he expected, even if it can’t replicate the physical contact of a real fight.
“It’s probably the closest thing you can get to boxing without taking a punch,” DeMoor said.
VR has struggled as a spectator esport, largely because it’s hard for an audience to follow what’s happening inside a headset. Boxing may be one of the few exceptions. When players are ducking, weaving, and throwing punches in real space, the action is easy to read even for people who have never used VR.
0:00
Whether VR boxing becomes a regular feature of competitive gaming remains to be seen. But for one night, two fighters throwing real punches inside a virtual ring showed what immersive esports might actually look like.
