WWE 2K20 preview: Who's out? Who's in? What's new?

Another year, another updated roster for WWE 2K. Let's take a moment to break down the changes and prepare for the brand new pro wrestling video game, which launches today, October 22, 2019. To view the entire announced roster for WWE 2K20, click here. Now, behold our breakdown of which wrestlers have been taken out and which characters are being added or returning, and get a look at an overview of some new features:

Who's out?

• Legends
• Alundra Blayze
• Bam Bam Bigelow
• British Bulldog
• DDP
• Greg Valentine
• Lex Luger
• Mr. Perfect
• Rick Martel
• Rick Rude
• Ricky Morton
• Rikishi
• Robert Gibson
• Sycho Sid
• Tatanka
• The Godfather
• Vader
• Those who just don't get enough TV time
• Aiden English
• Alexander Wolfe
• Epico Colon
• Jason Jordan
• Killian Dane
• Konnor
• Lio Rush
• Primo Colon
• Rhyno
• Viktor
• Those no longer with the company
• Chris Jericho
• Dean Ambrose
• Goldust
• Hideo Itami
• Nick Young
• TJ Perkins
• Tye Dillinger
• Alternate attires
• Chris Jericho '00
• Daniel Bryan '12
• Daniel Bryan '13
• John Cena Retro
• Randy Orton '13
• Sting '98 (Wolfpac)
• Sting 2010s
• Triple H '14

Who's in?

• Main roster
• Buddy Murphy
• Nikki Cross
• Zelina Vega (playable)
• NXT / NXT UK
• Io Shirai
• Jaxson Ryker
• Keith Lee
• Mark Andrews
• Matt Riddle
• Mia Yim
• Rhea Ripley
• Tommaso Ciampa
• Toni Storm
• Trent Seven
• 205 Live
• Humberto Carillo
• Legends
• Jerry "The King" Lawler
• Mark Henry
• Molly Holly
• X-Pac
• Managers
• Bobby Heenan
• Drake Maverick
• Alternate attires
• Bayley '15
• Bayley '17
• Becky Lynch '15
• Becky Lynch '17
• Charlotte Flair '14
• Charlotte Flair '15
• Charlotte Flair '17
• Charlotte Flair '18
• Maria Kanellis '08
• Natalya '14
• Natalya '16
• Nia Jax '17
• Nikki Bella '15
• Nikki Bella '16
• Sasha Banks '15
• Sasha Banks '16
• Sasha Banks '17
• Triple H '01
• Undertaker '91
• Season Pass DLC (available at launch)
• Braun Strowman - "Bump in the Night" alternate attire
• Bray Wyatt - "Bump in the Night" alternate attire
• Chyna - Deluxe Edition
• "The Fiend" Bray Wyatt - "Bump in the Night" pre-order bonus
• Finn Balor - "Bump in the Night" alternate attire
• Hulk Hogan - Deluxe Edition
• Mandy Rose - "Bump in the Night" alternate attire
• Mankind - Deluxe Edition
• Nikki Cross - "Bump in the Night" alternate attire
• Randy Orton - "Bump in the Night" alternate attire
• The Rock: $500 Shirt - Deluxe Edition
• Sasha Banks - "Bump in the Night" alternate attire
• Sheamus  - "Bump in the Night" alternate attire

By the Numbers

WWE 2K20 includes:

• 186 unique playable characters on-disc (excluding DLC)
• Same number as the 2K19 roster
• 225 playable characters on-disc, including alternate versions of superstars
• Three less than 2K19
• 47 unique playable women on-disc
• Five more than 2K19, including DLC
• 238 total characters on-disc, including managers and MyCareer original characters
• Fourteen less than 2K19

[Thanks to The Smackdown Hotel for providing these numbers.]

Roster take-aways

Honestly, the only characters I'll miss playing with are DDP and Chris Jericho. Jericho is one of my all-time favorite wrestlers, so he'll be a big loss for the 2K20 roster. (It's an easy fix, though. I'm sure there will be a created wrestler that is the spitting image of Y2J within hours of launch.) Everybody else that has been removed was someone that I rarely (if ever) played with, and most of them have either been off of TV for so long that I don't care about them or is a legend that was popular before my time, so I'm good with it. Cutting the dead weight. I approve.

As far as additions go, 2K is finally adding the three most glaring omissions from last year's game: Buddy Murphy, Nikki Cross and Tommaso Ciampa. A bunch of NXT talent joins the roster this time around, including big names like Io Shirai, Keith Lee and "The Original Bro" Matt Riddle. Perhaps the best additions to this year's game come via the Deluxe Edition, with the return of the hardcore legend Mankind, the immortal Hulk Hogan and (for the first time ever) the Eighth Wonder of the World, Chyna. The last-minute inclusion of Bray Wyatt's most recent incarnation, The Fiend, is great, too.

What else is new?

This year's Showcase Mode will focus on the story of the Four Horsewomen and the Women's Evolution in WWE, so we'll be treated to a bunch of retro alternative attires for the likes of Charlotte Flair, Bayley, Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch, among other prominent female characters.

There will be a Tower specifically dedicated to the career of cover co-star Roman Reigns. The tower will cover classic rivalries with Brock Lesnar, John Cena, the Undertaker and more.

In a first for the series, players will finally be able to create women wrestlers for use in MyCareer mode. Certainly, this is a good step for the inclusion of female gamers who want to have a more relatable story to play.

Arguably the most innovative change coming to 2K20 is the "WWE 2K Originals" concept, which will put unique twists on familiar characters. "2K Originals" will be available as paid DLC for gamers, beginning with the horror-themed "Bump in the Night" pack, headlined by The Fiend Bray Wyatt. Along with the freaky iteration of the former swamp dweller will come a handful of alternate, Halloween-like attires that transform our favorite superstars into monstrous versions of themselves. The mode will take players through original storylines ripped from the realms of science fiction and beyond. While we're don't know an incredible amount about the new mode right now, it will certainly open up the flood gates of creativity for the future of the franchise.

I wanted it and we're getting it!

• Mixed Match Challenge: Mirroring the popular annual competition that WWE has started hosting, 2K gamers will finally be able to create tag teams and play matches with mixed-gender partners. Want to play with John Cena and Sasha Banks? Would you like to pair the popular real-life MMC team of Braun Strowman and Alexa Bliss? Care to match up against Sheamus and Becky Lynch? We'll finally get the chance to do it in 2K20.

Quick Q&A

• Who will be the first wrestlers you play with in 2K20?
• I'll probably take advantage of the long-awaited return of Hulk Hogan, but I'm definitely going to use The Fiend very early on.
• Are there any superstars that you are more excited to play with in 2K20 than you have been in the past?
• Ricochet, Samoa Joe, Ali, Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano, Bayley, Sasha Banks
• Are there any superstars that you are less excited to play with in 2K20 than you have been in the past?
• Seth Rollins, Braun Strowman, AJ Styles, Becky Lynch
• Are there any superstars that you have no intention of playing with in 2K20?
• Andre the Giant, most of the cruiserweights or new NXT talent, Bobby Fish, Authors of Pain, Tamina, Nia Jax, X-Pac
• Who are you most looking forward to beating up?
• Matt Riddle and Roderick Strong, for sure. Probably Baron Corbin and Shane McMahon, too.
• What is your weapon of choice?
• Kendo stick, easy.
• What feature are you most looking forward to?
• As usual, probably Universe Mode. I created a new promotion called "Friday Fight Night" last year, and I think I'd like to reboot that, but without drafting out the entire roster to RAW, Smackdown! and Fight Night. There's too much unused talent if you do it that way. I'll probably draft about 20 or 25 people to each brand, then leave a big pool of unused free agents so I don't have to worry about leaving out popular superstars from my rivalries and storylines. I also think the 2K Originals mode is going to be fun.

The Bottom Line:

Admittedly, I've seen some less-than-stellar reviews for 2K20 so far, so that's a little troubling, but I have heard good things about the creativity of 2K Originals, so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and make up my own mind. It will be nice to have a new, updated roster, despite the loss of Jericho, which pains me to the core. It seems like there aren't a ton of new features right off the bat, so I'm hoping they're focusing on improving existing modes and features. Time will tell, I suppose.

For now, enjoy a couple WWE 2K20 videos to get you hyped:

And if you're in the mood for even more WWE content, don't forget about my recent interview with the infamous WWE villain Vickie Guerrero, which can be found here. Enjoy! See you jabronis in the ring.

MLB TV Viewing Stats - 2019

Last year, I had the insane idea to keep track of every single baseball game I watched using Major League Baseball's streaming service, MLB TV. I did so, and kept track of all of my viewing habits that you can find in a blog by clicking here.

I did the same thing in 2019 but decided to ramp up my findings with additional statistics. Here are the things I took note of any time that I watched a baseball game this year:

• Road team
• Home team
• Broadcast (which team's TV feed I tuned into)
• Winning team
• W/L result of the team whose broadcast I watched
• Duration of viewing
• 1-2 innings: "Minimal"
• 3-4 innings: "Partial"
• 5-7 innings: "Most"
• 8-9 innings: "Full"
• Any interesting notes about the game

By keeping track of these statistics, I have been able to determine whether I am getting my money's worth out of my annual MLB TV subscription and can also (somewhat sarcastically) tell whether I am a good or bad luck charm for the teams I cheer for.

Before we get down to the nitty-gritty, let's review a couple important things, including some stuff that I talked about in last year's blog, to present the broader scope of my investigation:

Factors That Affected My Viewing Habits in 2019:

• MLB TV imposes blackout restrictions on Salt Lake City viewers for any games played by the Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks, which means I can't watch Colorado or Arizona play at all, regardless of who or where they play.
• There are additional blackout restrictions for major, nationally televised games, such as "Sunday Night Baseball" or other big games aired by Fox, ESPN, etc., and those games are also unviewable on MLB TV.
• September was not a great month for my MLB TV viewing. I was busy doing other things, like running social media for FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention and, you know, getting married and moving and other miscellaneous adult tasks. I didn't watch any baseball between September 3 - September 26.

Untracked Games:

• I watched one Spring Training game on MLB TV, before the regular season started. I tracked this on my spreadsheet but will not be including it in my statistics for purposes of this particular blog.
• I watched a handful of the nationally televised games on TV; I did not count these as "games watched" in my tracker, so I technically watched a little more baseball than what I'm accounting for in this blog.
• During the 2019 season, I physically attended games in San Francisco, Cleveland and Cincinnati. I did not count these as "games watched," either.

Total Number of Games and Cost Per Game Watched:

• There are 30 teams in the MLB, each playing 162 games, for a total of 4,860 games in an entire season.
• I now realize that this number is actually counting each game (e.g., Orioles vs Yankees) as two games - one Orioles game and one Yankees game. To account for this, the number 4,860 should actually be divided in half to represent the number of actual 9-inning games that are played in a season: 2,430.
• (Note: This was not explained in last year's blog, although I believe the meaning of my message was not misunderstood.)
• The 2019 MLB season ran from March 28, 2019 - September 29, 2019, over a span of 186 days. It is not uncommon for there to be some days during the regular season when no games are played by any team.
• In last year's blog, I was a bit overzealous when I calculated the number of games I plausibly could have watched in one season. I ran the numbers as if I could possibly watch a maximum of two games per day for every single day of the season. That's just not realistic. Here are some notes about how I calculated things in 2019:
• Last year, I calculated that all Rockies and Diamondbacks games, plus nationally televised games, would be about 5% of the overall total of games played. Upon further consideration, Colorado and Arizona games (324 total) would account for 6.6% of total MLB games. I'm not sure how many nationally televised games there are per season, but it's safe to say that there is at least one blacked-out game per week of the season (we'll call it 26 weeks). This would add up to a total of about 7% (about 350 games) that I simply don't have access to.
• Although it is probably only reasonable to watch a maximum of one baseball game per day, there were some days where I did watch at least part of multiple games in a given day, even if I didn't watch all of the games from start to finish. This year, instead of multiplying the number of days in the season by 2 to determine the maximum number of games I could have watched, I will only multiply it by 1.5.
• If there are 186 days in the season and I multiply that by 1.5, as explained above, I am brought to a total of 279 games. From that, I'm subtracting 7% (Rockies and Diamondbacks games, plus 26 blackouts), and subtract an additional 5 games (to represent any nationally televised games that I actually did watch on TV). This brings the maximum number of games that I plausibly could have watched in 2019 to an even 248.
• In 2019, I watched at least a "minimal" portion (as defined above) of 65 games on the MLB TV app.
• This averages out to be about 2.6% of all games played for the entire league (2,430).
• Based on the plausible maximum number of games I could have watched, my calculations show that I watched about 26% of those games. Not bad!
• To calculate my "cost per game watched," I divided the dollar amount I paid by the number of games I watched on the app, which comes out to $1.85 per game. That's a dollar per game better than 2018!

Duration of Viewing:

• Based on the definitions previously listed, here's how long I watched the 65 games, listed in order of frequency:
• Partial: 29 games (44.6%)
• Most: 19 games (29.2%)
• Full: 9 games (13.8%)
• Minimal: 8 games (12.3%)

Overall W/L Record:

• Of the 65 games that I watched on MLB TV in 2019, the teams whose broadcast I watched were 40-25 (.615).
• Note: There were two "Game of the Day" broadcasts that I watched on the app, which featured a neutral broadcast team. In terms of the overall W/L record, I determined the wins and losses for those games based on the team that I wanted to win.

Home/Road Split:

• Of the 65 games I watched, the team I tuned in to watch played 41 home games and 22 games on the road.
• When I watched a team's home broadcast, those teams went 24-17 (.604).
• When I watched a team's road broadcast, the teams went 14-8 (.636).
• Note: I did not count the two "Game of the Day" games as either "home" or "road," which explains why only 63 of the 65 games were accounted for in this breakdown.

Times Watched (Total, Out of 130 Total Teams Watched):

• Texas Rangers: 19
• Cleveland Indians: 14
• Cincinnati Reds: 9
• Detroit Tigers: 8
• Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim: 7
• Seattle Mariners: 7
• Washington Nationals: 7
• Los Angeles Dodgers: 6
• New York Mets: 6
• Milwaukee Brewers: 4
• Minnesota Twins: 4
• Oakland Athletics: 4
• Pittsburgh Pirates: 4
• St. Louis Cardinals: 4
• Atlanta Braves: 3
• Boston Red Sox: 3
• Chicago Cubs: 3
• Kansas City Royals: 3
• New York Yankees: 3
• Philadelphia Phillies: 3
• Toronto Blue Jays: 3
• Chicago White Sox: 2
• San Diego Padres: 2
• Tampa Bay Rays: 1
• San Francisco Giants: 1

The Forgotten Five:

• Here are the five teams that I didn't (*or couldn't) watch a single time last year:
• Arizona Diamondbacks*
• Baltimore Orioles
• Houston Astros
• Colorado Rockies*
• Miami Marlins
• This is the second year in a row in which I did not watch the Miami Marlins a single time.

W/L Records for Every Team I Watched, Regardless of Broadcast:

• San Francisco Giants: 1-0 (1.000)
• Oakland Athletics: 3-1 (.750)
• Texas Rangers: 14-5 (.736)
• New York Mets: 4-2 (.666)
• Chicago Cubs: 2-1 (.666)
• Cleveland Indians: 9-5 (.642)
• Cincinnati Reds: 5-4 (.555)
• Los Angeles Dodgers: 3-3 (.500)
• Milwaukee Brewers: 2-2 (.500)
• Minnesota Twins: 2-2 (.500)
• San Diego Padres: 1-1 (.500)
• Philadelphia Phillies: 1-1 (.500)
• Chicago White Sox: 1-1 (.500)
• Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim: 3-4 (.428)
• Seattle Mariners: 3-4 (.428)
• Washington Nationals: 3-4 (.428)
• Atlanta Braves: 1-2 (.333)
• Boston Red Sox: 1-2 (.333)
• Kansas City Royals: 1-2 (.333)
• New York Yankees: 1-2 (.333)
• St. Louis Cardinals: 1-3 (.250)
• Pittsburgh Pirates: 1-3 (.250)
• Detroit Tigers: 1-7 (.125)
• Tampa Bay Rays: 0-1 (.000)
• Toronto Blue Jays: 0-3 (.000)

W/L Records for Teams Whose Broadcast I Watched (out of 63 games):

• Oakland Athletics: 1-0 (1.000)
• St. Louis Cardinals: 1-0 (1.000)
• San Francisco Giants: 1-0 (1.000)
• Texas Rangers: 14-5 (.736)
• Cleveland Indians: 9-4 (.692)
• Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim: 2-1 (.666)
• Seattle Mariners: 2-1 (.666)
• Cincinnati Reds: 4-3 (.571)
• Washington Nationals: 3-3 (.500)
• Atlanta Braves: 1-1 (.500)
• Los Angeles Dodgers: 2-3 (.400)
• Chicago Cubs: 0-1 (.000)
• Chicago White Sox: 0-1 (.000)

Other Fun Facts About Games I Watched:

• I watched the first game of the season (Mets @ Nationals). Robinson Cano homered in his first at-bat as a Met.
• I watched the final Opening Day at Globe Life Park in Texas.
• I saw Patrick Corbin's debut for the Washington Nationals.
• I watched three games that went to extra innings.
• I saw Bryce Harper's return to Washington as a member of the Philadelphia Phillies.
• I watched a game on Jackie Robinson Day.
• I saw a bunch of games that were won on walk-off hits, including one that ended on a grand slam, and one in which Cleveland's Carlos Santana hit his second walk-off winner in consecutive days.
• I watched a Dodgers game that my parents attended in L.A. It ended with a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 9th.
• I saw Rougned Odor get thrown out at home while trying for an inside-the-park home run.
• I watched the end of the game where the Angels threw a combined no-hitter in their first game after the unexpected death of their pitcher Tyler Skaggs.
• I saw several games that were affected by rain delays, including a game in Cleveland that was stopped twice - and ultimately ended prematurely in the 8th inning.
• I saw the Indians' Shane Bieber throw a complete game shutout with one hit on 102 pitches.
• I watched a 14-inning game from start to finish.
• I saw Cincinnati's Jesse Winker hit a home run on the first pitch of the bottom of the 1st inning.
• I watched a game during Players' Weekend.
• I watched the Rangers game in which they retired Michael Young's number. Texas overcame a 2-1 deficit in the bottom of the 9th to win, 3-2.
• I watched as the Reds celebrated long-time radio broadcaster Marty Brenneman's final home broadcast.
• In his final start of the season, I saw Texas' Mike Minor pitch 9.2 innings to end the year with exactly 200 strikeouts.
• I watched the final game played at Globe Life Park in Texas, on the final day of the season.

***

So there you go. Them's the stats. Bless and praise you if you actually read this entire post. Sure, it's nerdy. Sure, it doesn't really matter. Many may consider this a complete waste of time. But you know what? I'm paying money for this thing each year and I want to make sure I'm getting good value out of it. But whatever. Baseball is great and I love it. Like I said in 2018, at least now I can die in peace, knowing that all this pointless information is stored digitally online.

THE END