WWE 2K25 has delivered some pretty killer DLC overall and includes the highest amount of new MyFaction content to date as well, while the new Island mode enabled current-gen console players to enjoy Goldberg and Nikki Bella DLC. This final mainline DLC pack brings about several debuts for the series, including Tito Santana, Sid Justice, Jesse "The Body" Ventura, The Junkyard Dog, and "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff. Sid, under his Sycho Sid act, was last featured in 2K19 while everyone else is new for the 2K era of the franchise. The inclusion of Orndorff in particular is great to see since he's been under-represented across the board is games given what a big star he was.
While it has been somewhat lost to time, Orndorff's feud with Hogan was such a big draw that it led to The Big Event in Toronto being a stadium-level sellout - the first in company history. This gave the company the confidence it needed to set WrestleMania III in the Pontiac Silverdome and that begat the era we're in now that started with WrestleMania being a stadium-level show that has expanded to all of their major PPV/PLE shows. Orndorff's WWF run was shorter than it may appear - with him spending about four years there, but truly maximizing his time there after being a major star in Georgia and especially a big push as North American Champion in Mid-South feuding with Ted DiBiase.
He would retire in 1988 and run a bowling alley before returning to the Herb Abrams UWF and get a Smoky Mountain Wrestling run with Jim Cornette and Rick Rubin's regional promotion that was so well-received he would get a run in WCW off of it and he had a fantastic undercard run there. Surprisingly, he never faced Hogan during his WCW tenure despite their SNME steel cage match being a legendary encounter in that show's history and one of WWE's greatest cage matches ever. His in-ring career largely ended at the end of 1995 and he became one of WCW's most-revered trainers in the Power Plant.
Jesse "The Body" Ventura is probably the worst big-name pro wrestler ever whose career was largely carried by his promo work and AWA team with Adrian Adonis. His promos were so good that fans would cut the AWA TV show up into just the promo work because it was a territory known for great talkers like Jesse and Mad Dog Vachon alongside Bobby Heenan and Nick Bockwinkel, but the in-ring work outside of Bockwinkel and the High Flyers tag team was largely poor. Jesse's East-West Connection team with Adonis was one of the company's best teams ever and Adonis carried the in-ring while Jesse hyped the bouts up.
Jesse's in-ring days were largely winding down due to blood clots right as he was getting into a Hogan feud in WWE, but he would step in the ring a few times to help cement Randy Savage as a star of the future and technically came out of retirement for a match against the Orient Express as a part of a Tag Team buddy cop pilot with Roddy Piper. Outside of wrestling, he became the Governer of Minnesota and has been a regular podcast and TV presence while also being proud of his work in the Navy SEALs before they were the SEALs proper. He made a deal in the last couple of years to rejoin the fray in WWE with new merchandise and with that one-year deal ending, this could be the only time Jesse gets into a game - although I hope we do get a game with both he and Adonis playable together.
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