Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick is about to have a very big year with the impending launch of GTA 6 – which, depending on who you talk to, will either be the biggest video game release of all time or the biggest cultural event in all of human history. (No pressure.) For Zelnick himself, however, that surely pales in comparison to the accomplishment he's spent years preparing for: becoming a virtual WWE superstar.
Yes, Zelnick was quietly added to the WWE 2K26 roster in a free update earlier today. You won't find him mentioned in the official patch notes, but players soon saw him there in the character select screen, faintly smiling with his 77 character rating. That kind of score won't win him many matches, but apparently the crowd treats him as a babyface, flying in the face of the relationship most gamers have with the executives running AAA publishers these days.
They even licensed My Way – the Frank Sinatra song, not the Limp Bizkit track that was famously used in promotion of Wrestlemania 17 – for Zelnick's entrance. They recorded unique lines from Wade Barrett and Michael Cole, complete with terrible puns, on commentary. The only thing the devs didn't do is give Zelnick proper ring attire, instead opting to have him come to the ring in a suit.
Please don't think that I spend my days thirsting over gaming CEOs – Zelnick's presided over his fair share of layoffs, after all – but I learned a piece of trivia about the Take-Two boss years ago that has stuck with me ever since: he's really buff. You wouldn't know it from his occasional interview appearances, where he's typically covered up in a light sweater, but beneath that business casual wrapping lies the rippling muscles of someone who takes exercise very seriously. That "The Program" branding you see around his in-game entrance is a reference to his fitness group.
Zelnick revealed his 8% body fat physique to the world back in 2018, when the then-60-year-old CEO was promoting a fitness book he'd co-written. He said at the time that the photo wasn't intended as a thirst trap, but instead insisted that "the shirtless picture is an athletic picture and is intended as such."
Which is fair enough, but it's still so bizarre to see a video game executive in this kind of shape that I still think about it every time Zelnick's name comes up, something that's increasingly common here in the leadup to GTA 6. A colleague and I collaborated on this ill-advised tweet for a former employer when Zelnick's physique was first revealed to us, and I still can't let it go. I guess turning him into a pro wrestler is just bringing the whole thing full circle.
Is single-player dead? "Not in this shop," says Take-Two CEO, who has 8 percent body fathttps://t.co/Bgn37q6TdW pic.twitter.com/EL0oJRnxLnFebruary 9, 2021
