Rhea Ripley should get to fight Cody Rhodes for the Undisputed WWE Championship. Why not? She’s arguably been the MVP of modern WWE storylines for years, creating compelling tales with Dominik Mysterio, Liv Morgan, Damian Priest, Charlotte Flair, and others, as well as contributing a plethora of dominant matches to the WWE canon.
She’s driven a modern women’s revolution, opened doors for the entire roster, and made WWE’s women’s division must-see entertainment. She’s even led the company to dabble in intergender matches, to prove her barrier-crossing strength. While it currently seems unlikely that WWE would allow her to compete for its pinnacle prize, at the very least, you can now do this in WWE 2K25, the first modern game in the series to allow proper intergender matchups.
Per Lynell Jinks, Creative Director, it’s a feature 2K and Visual Concepts have wanted to implement for years, and now that modern WWE storylines have “caught up” with the idea, it’s time for it to finally take centre stage.
“We’ve been asking permission for a few years now, but we are a simulation of the WWE product that you see on programming, and it’s something that they just weren’t doing in recent years,” Jinks told GamesHub during a recent roundtable interview. “We were politely told no, and then … we’ve built up that trust.”
“I think WWE was like, ‘okay, I think they’re onto something now’ being that we were nominated for Sports Game of the Year two years in a row … So yeah, they said yes [to intergender wrestling] and we’re super happy they did – because it definitely increases the replayability factor and fun factor in the game.”
According to Jinks, it also wasn’t too much of a stretch to introduce the feature into the game. While Jinks described a need to turn off blood in intergender matches, as the topic remains fairly sensitive, and there was some concerns about height disparity on the extremes of the spectrum – in Omos vs. Alexa Bliss or Zelina Vega, for example – the team is really proud of the final result in gameplay.
“I think the big [challenge] that we were always conscious of is the height disparity … but for the most part, it works,” Jinks said. “There’s also making sure we’re doing it in a professional way.”
Thanks to 2K, GamesHub was recently able to get hands-on with WWE 2K25 across a range of modes, and it was fantastic to see the game’s new intergender matches freely available in sandbox mode, and to pore over the options it presents. For years now, the WWE 2K games have featured frustrating gender-locking that siloed the men’s and women’s divisions, reducing choice in gameplay.
Rhea Ripley actually spoke about this to GamesHub in 2023, expressing a desire for intergender matches in future games. Now, the reality is here – and it’s a blast pitting superstars together.
Read: WWE 2K25 will feature intergender matches
I started my gameplay journey with a wild option: Jade Cargill vs. Roman Reigns. We’ve all seen how powerful Cargill is, and on a muscle-per-muscle basis, she can certainly compete – so it wasn’t all that wild to see her storming the ring to bodyslam Reigns and attempting to put him away for good. (I did lose the match, because it took me some time to re-familiarise myself with the WWE 2K control layout – but it was spectacular while it lasted.)
Body slams hit hard, as usual, and controls allow for a creativity and flourish as you grapple your opponent, and attempt to catch them with your signature and finisher for a pinned three-count. There’s not a whole lot of changes from prior WWE games in this year’s iteration – besides some new grappling mini-games – because the formula has already been pretty well perfected. Once I got back into the groove of its combat system, I was onto the next bout.
In fact, it was the match this feature was likely made for: Rhea Ripley vs. Dominik Mysterio. I chose to pit them together in a Brawl-type match, and they ran around the NXT parking lot kicking, punching, slamming, and attempting submissions. Ripley wasn’t always dominating, of course – I still find the counter bar for matches fairly ungenerous – but her strength did mean “Dirty Dom” spent plenty of time wiping the floor.
Choice really adds to this whole experience. Before, picking a woman wrestler meant locking out the vast majority of potential matchups and championships. With fewer women available in the game, it meant playing the same matches over and over. Now, the possibilities are endless, and you can even pick matches that simply won’t make TV.
While the preview of WWE 2K25 shown to media didn’t have the full roster available, I’m already planning how far Ripley will go through the ranks. How many legends she’ll punch into dust. (And how many are deserving of that treatment.) I’m also very keen to see how this approach shapes the new, singular MyRISE story mode of the game, which will feature matches against both men and women’s wrestlers.
In practice, intergender wrestling makes WWE 2K25 feel like a genuine upgrade on its predecessor, with far more choice in your hands than ever before. Then you add in its other upgrades and tweaks, including new match types, and the Bloodline focus of its Showcase mode (complete with impassioned Paul Heyman promos), and the new open world online Island mode, and it’s fair to consider this year’s big WWE 2K release will be a bigger, better wrestling game in every way.
Each year, 2K Games makes small improvements to its annual wrestling game franchise. This year, it feels like there’s been a bigger leap than most – and it’s all down to small, clever decisions that make the game feel genuinely bigger and more immersive. While a vertical slice doesn’t reveal the whole story, my time with WWE 2K25 was incredibly promising, and hinted at a still-bright future for the franchise, despite its long tenure.
I say bring it on. I’m polishing my wrestling boots as we speak.
WWE 2K25 is set to launch for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on 14 March 2025. Those who order the Deadman and Bloodline Editions of the game will get access from 7 March 2025.
