Many of the match types you see in WWE have been around for many, many years, such as cage matches and ladder matches. However, Underground matches are a fairly new concept to professional wrestling, and now, they’re also a new concept to the WWE 2K series.
They’ve made their debut in WWE 2K25, and they provide an experience different from every other match type in the game. For starters, these matches look a lot different, as there are no ring ropes, there are people standing around the ring, and the ring mat is just plain black. More importantly, though, the matches function differently, too. Here’s a full explanation of how they work.
How To Win An Underground Match
These are based on the default rules. As with most matches in the game, you can make custom rules to change some of these things.
There are no pinfalls or count-outs in an Underground match. You can only win by knockout, submission, or disqualification. Submission and DQ are self-explanatory since they feature in many other match types. You need to pass a mini-game to make someone tap, and if you hit someone with a weapon or low blow them, you will get disqualified.
To win by knockout, you first need to severely damage your opponent so that their health bar is practically empty. Once it is, you can hit a signature or finisher to get them into the ‘danger’ zone, which is where it says ‘danger’ on their health bar. From this position, you have to hit one more big move, like a signature or a finisher, to knock them out cold. The ‘danger’ warning disappears if the opponent counters one of your moves or gets some attacks in. So, you don’t get much time to put them away.
You don’t need to be in the ring to win the match.
What Makes An Underground Match Unique
Underground matches are unique because of the environment in which you’re wrestling. No ring ropes mean you can’t perform springboards or top-rope dives on your opposition. If you’re playing as someone who needs these things for their signatures or finishers, they will have alternate moves in their place, similar to what happens in backstage brawls.
Something else you can’t do is throw someone into the ropes and have them spring back. That said, you can still Irish whip them to the edge. When teetering on that edge, you can hit them with a grapple to throw them out or do a running attack to knock them to the floor. And if you whip them into the corner, they don’t have a cushiony turnbuckle to hit; they go straight into the post.
The people outside of the ring don’t really come into play. They’re more of a visual thing than anything else. In fact, when you’re walking around outside of the ring, you just phase through them. This isn’t actually a bad thing since they’d definitely get in the way otherwise.
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