Wrestling fans used to watch the show, argue about it with their friends and maybe recreate their favorite matches with action figures. Gaming completely changed that. Now fans can book their own WrestleMania, build fantasy rosters, create wrestlers from scratch and spend hours running an entire promotion without ever leaving the couch.
That crossover between wrestling and gaming has only gotten bigger over the years. WWE 2K turned fantasy booking into something fans could actually control, while online communities, livestreams and channels like UpUpDownDown gave wrestlers another way to connect with the same people watching them on television every week.
The WWE 2K series is probably the most obvious example. Modes such as Universe and MyGM hand fans something wrestling viewers have wanted forever: control. Instead of screaming at the television because a favorite wrestler lost, players can change the winner, rewrite the rivalry or tear up the entire card and start over.
Create-a-wrestler communities have taken things even further. Players regularly recreate wrestlers who aren’t officially included in the game, build arenas from different promotions and put together fantasy matches that could never happen on actual television. That freedom has turned wrestling games into something much bigger than simply picking two wrestlers and having a match. For a lot of fans, they’re basically running their own promotion.
Austin Creed, better known to longtime WWE viewers as Xavier Woods, helped push the connection between wrestlers and gaming even further with UpUpDownDown. The channel wasn’t built around wrestlers pretending to care about video games for a promotional appearance. Gaming was already a huge part of Creed’s life, and that came across whenever cameras were rolling.
Creed previously explained just how much gaming became a shared language inside the wrestling locker room, telling Ringside News that plenty of wrestlers were playing behind the scenes.
“There’s definitely a ton of guys and girls in the locker room that play video games.”
He also explained why that mattered to him personally, describing gaming as the same kind of escape wrestling provided when he was younger.
“For me, video games are like a safe space, just like wrestling was when I was little.”
That crossover eventually became part of Creed’s identity beyond anything happening inside a wrestling ring. Ringside News has extensively covered Creed’s gaming influence and his work with UpUpDownDown, which helped put wrestlers in front of fans in a completely different environment.
UpUpDownDown also gave fans something WWE television couldn’t always provide. Wrestlers could sit down, play Madden, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat or another game and simply interact without needing an ongoing storyline to explain why they were in the same room.
That produced combinations fans weren’t always going to get on television. Gaming even helped create wrestling crossovers that fans still talk about years later. Big E recently recalled how Creed’s gaming background and Kenny Omega’s own connection to gaming helped bring The New Day and The Elite together outside the ring. Ringside News covered Big E explaining how gaming opened the door for The New Day and The Elite to interact, long before the wrestling landscape looked the way it does today.
Things have changed significantly since UpUpDownDown first exploded. Creed and Kofi Kingston are no longer with WWE and have moved into AEW, while questions naturally followed about what would happen to the gaming brand.
As Ringside News previously covered, UpUpDownDown’s status became a major topic following Creed’s move to AEW. That alone shows how much bigger the channel became than a side project. Fans weren’t just interested in where Creed would wrestle next. They wanted to know what happened to the gaming community he helped build.
Wrestling’s relationship with gaming also goes far beyond wrestling-specific titles. Today’s fan can watch wrestling on television, jump into WWE 2K afterward, watch wrestlers streaming games, debate fantasy matches on social media and then move into completely different forms of online entertainment without really leaving the same digital ecosystem.
That includes mobile titles, multiplayer games, livestreaming communities and social entertainment such as casino games. The connection isn’t that every game needs to become wrestling-themed. It’s that wrestling fans now spend their time across a much wider range of interactive entertainment than they did when television was the primary way to engage with the product.
Wrestlers have also embraced gaming culture directly in their presentation. Gear inspired by Final Fantasy, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, anime and other franchises has become commonplace. Entrances borrow from gaming. Wrestlers reference games on social media, compete against each other online and show up at gaming conventions.
Creed has even carried that fandom on his body. Ringside News previously covered his video game-inspired tattoo featuring elements from Mega Man and Final Fantasy VII, another example of just how genuine the crossover has become.
The audience changed along with the wrestlers. Years ago, watching RAW or SmackDown was primarily a passive experience. The company decided what happened, viewers watched it unfold and everyone argued about it afterward. Now fans can immediately load a game and create the version they wanted to see.
Don’t like the champion? Change them. Want two wrestlers from different companies to face each other? Download them and book the match. Think you could run a better show? MyGM and Universe Mode are sitting there waiting.
That’s part of why gaming fits wrestling so naturally. Wrestling has always encouraged fans to imagine what comes next. Video games simply handed them the controls.
Gaming didn’t replace traditional wrestling fandom. It expanded it. WWE 2K gave fans their own booking office, UpUpDownDown showed another side of the wrestlers themselves, and streaming turned gaming into another place where performers and fans could share the same space. Wrestling may still happen inside the ring, but being a wrestling fan now stretches far beyond those ropes.
How much has gaming changed the way you follow professional wrestling, and do you spend more time with WWE 2K, wrestling streams or traditional weekly shows? Let us know what you think and leave your feedback in the comments.
