With the WWE 2K23 Season Pass being officially announced earlier this week, we now know every wrestler that will be on the playable roster in that game. There are some highly-anticipated new additions to the roster this year like Cody Rhodes, Bray Wyatt, and Roxanne Perez, but the thing with an annual game series is that we can always look toward the future.
No matter who you think has been snubbed from the roster this year, there’s always next year for them to get their time to shine, and this year in particular has been a wild one with all the returns to WWE. On top of that, the wrestling landscape can change dramatically in a year, wrestlers who we never thought we’d see in WWE could make their debut, meaning they’d be in the next video game for sure.
We’ve picked out the wrestlers missing from WWE 2K23’s roster that we think could very well be in next year’s game.
Jay White
Let’s start with the juicy stuff.
As of the time of writing, “Switchblade” Jay White is a free agent in the world of wrestling. It’s been expected that the former IWGP Heavyweight Champion would be leaving his home of New Japan Pro Wrestling for a while, and after losing a “loser leaves NJPW” match to Eddie Kingston, it’s been made official.
There’s speculation about where he’ll land, but most of those in the know believe he’ll end up signing with WWE. This would be a huge acquisition for the company, similar to when AJ Styles jumped ship from NJPW to WWE in 2016.
If he does join WWE, White’s debut could come as soon as the Raw after WrestleMania, in which case he’d definitely make 2K24’s roster.
Candice LeRae
Candice LaRae is by far the strangest omission from this year’s roster. LeRae disappeared from WWE TV in July 2021, and would shortly after announce that she was pregnant. As wrestling definitely isn’t the kind of job you can do while pregnant, she remained on maternity leave all the way up until her WWE contract expired on May 6, 2022.
However, she returned to the company in September and was immediately back on TV. LeRae was on 2K22’s playable roster, and her return came sooner than Bray Wyatt – who made the cut for this year’s DLC – so why she was left off is unclear, but it makes her inclusion in next year’s game a near-certainty.
Bronson Reed
Returning in December 2022, there was no way Bronson Reed was going to make the cut for this year’s game, but fans were disappointed to see he wasn’t included nonetheless. He’s been a solid presence in the mid-card since his return, most recently putting on a highlight performance in the Elimination Chamber. He’s a star on the rise and could be a much bigger deal by the time WWE 2K24 releases.
Mia Yim
Another wrestler who returned too late for 2K23 is Mia Yim. She was released from WWE in November 2021 and toured the indies for a few months before eventually returning to her former home, Impact wrestling. She had some good matches but didn’t make much of a splash there, and she eventually decided to return to WWE in November 2022, almost exactly a year after she left.
She’s been a solid presence on Raw since her return, and will definitely be in next year’s game if she stays with WWE.
William Regal
Not all of the WWE returns this year were for active wrestlers. The beloved Brit has a storied wrestling career but has spent the last decade working behind the scenes, recruiting and training talent in WWE.
He was on the WWE 2K22 roster as a legend, but left the company and joined AEW shortly before the game’s release. He made a big splash during his year in AEW, forming the Blackpool Combat Club and eventually helping to crown the current AEW World Champion, MJF.
It wasn’t to last though, and he returned to WWE in January of this year, with the grand-sounding job title of “Vice President of Global Talent Development”, whatever that means. As for the video games, it just means we’ll get to play as his younger incarnations in next year’s game, so it’s a win-win.
Roderick Strong
Roderick Strong has been a mainstay of the WWE game’s roster for many years now, and it was a surprise when he wasn’t included in this year’s game. Looking at the situation though, there are credible reasons why he missed the cut.
He, unfortunately, was taken out of action in early 2022 with an ankle injury and hasn’t been on WWE TV since. The length of time he’s taken out has led to some speculation that his injury may in fact be more severe than was originally reported, but we have no way of knowing for sure.
Either way, the nature of the injury meant that Strong was unable to perform the motion capture required for this year’s game. While normally that wouldn’t be an issue, as the team at 2K could just use last year’s model and mocap data, Strong underwent a major gimmick change since 2K22, so he’d require all-new sessions to be in 2K23.
Hopefully, he is now reaching the tail-end of his recovery period and can make his in-ring return soon, which would allow him to be ready to do anything that was needed for 2K24.
Gallus
This Scottish faction has slowly become a pretty big deal since their debut for NXT UK in 2018. Real-life brothers Joe and Mark Coffey teamed up with Wolfgang soon after their individual debuts and have been a force to be reckoned with ever since. The trio held the NXT UK Tag Team Championships for a massive 497 days from 2019 to 2021, and all three men have had prominent runs as singles competitors too.
Still, none of that was enough to earn them a spot on the WWE games roster. However, since NXT UK officially folded and Gallus has moved to NXT US, they’re much more likely to get the nod next year. Not only are they far more accessible for things like scans and mocap sessions, but they also recently won the NXT Tag Team Championships, so they can’t be missed out now.
Ric Flair
One of the greatest of all time, Ric Flair missing out on a WWE game is quite surprising, but he’s made a few moves outside of the company this past year that caused him to be cut.
Most prominently, on July 31, 2022, he competed in an independent show titled “Ric Flair’s Last Match”. If you haven’t already seen it, don’t, it was terrible. Flair is 74 years old now, and it was extremely uncomfortable to watch him flail about in the ring. According to Flair himself, he passed out mid-match and had to be woken by his tag team partner, Andrade.
We can all agree it’s better to leave the memories alone, and we’d all rather have Flair at his prime in video game form, so hopefully, he’ll come to an agreement with WWE that lets him appear in the games once more.
Nia Jax
Nia Jax is in a strange position right now, as no one seems to know whether she’s actually with WWE or not right now. She took some time off in 2021 for mental health reasons and was eventually released from her contract in November of that same year. She took some time away from the ring, making no major wrestling appearances in 2022, and many speculated she may have decided to retire altogether.
However, the former Raw Women’s Champion reemerged in WWE in the 2023 Women’s Royal Rumble match in January. She had a brief run of dominance before all 11 wrestlers in the ring teamed up and threw her out of the ring. She hasn’t been seen again since, so whether her return was a one-off, or WWE management is waiting for the right time to unleash her again is unclear.
Either way, if she’s on good terms with WWE and can make sporadic appearances for the company, then a spot in WWE 2K24 wouldn’t be that far-fetched.
Kenny Omega
Now, wait, I know, but hear me out.
Kenny Omega is someone many consider to be the poster boy for AEW, and someone who would never ever join WWE, but things have changed a lot since AEW first started in 2019. For one thing, Cody Rhodes is a wrestler people said would never join WWE, and here he is in WWE 2K23.
For another, Omega himself has said that he’s “open-minded” to joining WWE. While we don’t know the date for certain, Omega’s AEW contract will be expiring this year, and at that point, the negotiations with both companies could go any number of ways. Recent insider reports have suggested that WWE would be willing to empty their billion-dollar vaults to get Omega on board, and who knows where the man himself will be at, physically and mentally, by the time that day comes.
No matter what way you look at it, there is a non-zero chance that Kenny Omega will be under a WWE contract by the end of 2023, and if he is, there’s no doubt that the team at 2K would put all hands on deck to get him on the WWE 2K24 roster.
Written by Ryan Woodrow on behalf of GLHF.
