As the almost two-and-a-half year wait for a new mainline WWE game draws to a close, questions are beginning to circulate about how the WWE 2K22 roster will stack up. There is always a lot of hype surrounding which new stars will be making their debuts in WWE 2K22, but there's speculation aplenty at the top of the card too.
Ratings in the WWE games are usually an encapsulation how each wrestler has been performing at over the year. However, WWE 2K22 is in the unique position of having two years of history to evaluate. With beloved features like General Manager mode rumoured to return, there are plenty of wrestlers who arguably deserve the top spot, but some are almost guaranteed to be high up.
Bianca Belair - Rating: 90
In WWE 2K19, Bianca Belair made her video game debut as a DLC wrestler from NXT. In both that game and WWE 2K20, she was rated a 77. However, she has come an incredibly long way in two short years. At the time of WWE 2K20's release, she was still in NXT and considered a rookie. She had a few praise-worthy matches on a big stage, but audiences had yet to see her true potential.
In 2020, that began to change once she left NXT to join Smackdown. There, she racked up win after win as fans came to recognize her talent. Those backstage recognized it too, as she came out the victor in the 2021 Women's Royal Rumble. Bianca Belair and Sasha Banks got the main event spot of night one on Wrestlemania and tore the house down, with Bianca claiming the Smackdown Women's Championship for herself.
Edge - Rating: 92
Edge has been a mainstay of the WWE for decades. His first appearance in a game was in 1999, and he's appeared in at least one every year since then. However, since his 2011 retirement, he has only been featured in his past incarnation given he wasn't an active competitor.
However, he set the wrestling world ablaze when he returned in 2020, there was just no WWE game that year to commemorate the occasion. This means WWE 2K22 will be his first game appearance since coming out of retirement. In January 2021, he won the Men's Royal Rumble in an emotional performance that lasted over an hour. He then went to the main event of Wrestlemania, putting a stellar match with Roman Reigns and Daniel Bryan. Even though he came up short in that match, he's been on a roll ever since and deserves to be ranked as high as possible.
Drew McIntyre - Rating: 93
Drew McIntyre was someone who felt like a star from day one. However, in his first run from 2011-2014, he didn't blow up. He went away, bulked up, got a new look, and returned to the WWE in 2017 with fire in his eyes. He dominated NXT before quickly moving up to Raw, and everyone could tell that him winning a world title was a matter of "when," not "if."
That happened in 2020, when he won the Men's Royal Rumble and destroyed Brock Lesnar at Wrestlemania to win the WWE Championship; a title he held for almost a full year. Even though he no longer has the belt, he has remained a force to be reckoned with in WWE during a year where many are defecting to rival company AEW.
Charlotte Flair - Rating: 95
Charlotte Flair has been sitting atop WWE's Women's Division since the moment she arrived, and as the years go by she has no intention of stepping down, even after her dad Ric Flair left the company. Flair's 2020 started with a bang, as she won the Women's Royal Rumble and beat Rhea Ripley for the NXT Women's Championship at Wrestlemania. She lost the title early in the summer and was forced to sit out most of the year after undergoing surgery.
However, since she returned in December 2020, she has reclaimed her place at the top. She won the Women's Tag Team Championship with Asuka, and sat out Wrestlemania, but immediately came back and won the Raw Women's Championship twice. She still holds the title to this day, and will likely hold it for months to come.
Roman Reigns - Rating: 97
After sitting out the first half of 2020 due to COVID-19, Roman Reigns made a splash at SummerSlam in August 2020, returning and turning heel for the first time since his S.H.I.E.L.D days. Since then, he has been unstoppable.
Edge, Bryan Danielson (who has since left the company), John Cena, and Brock Lesnar are just a handful of competitors Roman Reigns has steamrolled in 2020 and 2021. If the rumors are true that he will be fighting The Rock at Wrestlemania this year, he could be in the conversation for the greatest wrestler of all time. What's for sure is he should be the greatest wrestler in WWE 2K22.
WWE 2K22 is in development for March 2022.