Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick has been added to WWE 2K26 for reasons that still aren't clear to me. Even weirder, despite presumably never wrestling a day in his life, he has been given a higher rating than a considerable chunk of the playable roster.

Strauss Zelnick Is A WWE Superstar, Kind Of

via CNBC

Season three of WWE 2K26's Ringside Pass kicked off yesterday, and the Take-Two boss was quietly added to the game as part of that update. Just to be crystal clear, this isn't a fan-made creation. This is an official addition to the roster created by the team at 2K.

Zelnick even has his own entrance music, Frank Sinatra's My Way, which I'm assuming cost the studio a lot to license. My guess would be somewhere in the tens of thousands, maybe even more if it's a permanent addition. There are also new lines of commentary so that the announcers can acknowledge Zelnick and comment on his unexpected decision to step inside the squared circle.

Okay, "Strauss Zelnick looking to take a title here in WWE, in fact, he might Take-Two," got a laugh out of me. Kudos, 2K.

Unlike the game's other themes, My Way cannot be attributed to someone else on the roster, nor is it available to use when creating your own WWE Superstars. It's also not easy to edit Zelnick with some claiming 2K has made it impossible. However, seasoned WWE 2K content creator WhatsTheStatus managed to get past 2K's roadblocks in a matter of hours to create the Zelnick model you can see below.

Zelnick Has A Higher Rating Than A Lot Of Big Stars

The worst and weirdest part of all this is the rating that has been attributed to Zelnick. The CEO has a 77 which, while way short of big stars like Roman Reigns and Rhea Ripley, is a higher rating than quite a few WWE Superstars, past and present, that you can play as in WWE 2K26.

Time to reel off a few of the wrestlers who Zelnick has been deemed better than at their craft based on his rating in the latest WWE games. William Regal, someone fans consider to be one of the greatest technical wrestlers ever, '97 Eddie Guerrero, who was arguably as good then as he ever was at that stage of his carrer, former NXT Champion Johnny Gargano, current top NXT stars Zaria, Tatum Paxley, and Thea Hail, and Tommaso Ciampa, who I'm assuming WWE is still upset with for leaving the company to try his luck in AEW.

While I still can't figure out the point of this, Zelnick's addition to the 2K26 roster came just hours after he talked up the WWE series during an interview. I'm assuming he knew about his imminent virtual reveal and felt the need to acknowledge that the wrestling games exist under the Take-Two banner. It's rare that he ever discusses anything other than GTA 6 nowadays. Maybe he'll be in that, too.

I'm sure most of you either don't care about Zelnick being in the game, or you're a little annoyed about it because, well, what's the point? I'd like to take this opportunity to remind any of you feeling that way that you don't ever have to be Zelnick in WWE 2K26, but you do now have the opportunity to throw a CEO off the top of Hell in a Cell like he's Mankind over and over and over again.

WWE 2K26 Like Follow Followed Fighting Sports Systems OpenCritic Reviews Top Critic Avg: 80/100 Critics Rec: 74% Released March 12, 2026 ESRB Teen / Blood, Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence, In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items), Users Interact Developer(s) Visual Concepts Publisher(s) 2K 8 Images Close
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