The OtherArena

[tdcheetah]

So, I'm working away here and listening to my music collection to see what other uptempo stuff I want to add to my "Music to Edit Prototypes By" (much as I love Joe Jackson and Thomas Dolby, even I need a break from a steady 100% diet!), and Bob Seger's "Her Strut" comes on.

And suddenly I'm swept away back to mid-80s NWA, watching Woman come to the ring. Not flashy like those Blonde Bimbo of the Month Valets, just an utter presence.

Man, I don't even get that fast and detailed a reaction to "Iron Man." :)

What are your favorite wrestler + theme song combos? Can be real songs or dedicated theme music (the "Mr. Perfect" theme is awesome, as were most of the 90s Undertaker themes), national or indy workers. What music do you *wish* certain wrestlers had come to the ring with?


Lee, who also instassociates "Connection", by Elastica, with Steve Corino.

[eron]

For me, a theme song is a make or break from the first few seconds. The gong on Taker's, the screeching feedback on Bret's, the shattering glass on Austin's, etc. It doesn't matter if the rest is good or not. The Rock's theme is pretty shit but the, "Do you smell" makes up for it.

I think my all time favourite theme would have to be Edge's. When his first vignettes were made and that song was playing in the background, it made me a fan of his without even seeing him in the ring. I just knew he had to be awesome. The fact his first finisher was called the Downward Spiral kinda helped the fanboy in me :)

[Frank_Jewett]

Heyman aired a music video for "Connection" with Mikey Whipwreck, so I've always thought of "Connection" as Mikey's theme.

My favorite theme song was Ted Nugent's "Stranglehold" which Bill Mercer often referred to as "the sound of upbeat young america" in a ripoff of an old bandstand cliche.

[Jeremy Billones]

[Scott]

I can still think of a few that I get flashbacks when I hear them:

Guns N Roses "Welcome To The Jungle", when I hear the intro to that song I instantly think Can-Am Express. And though I like Kawada, I still think Kawada and Fuyuki coming out to "Footloose" (even though that's what they were called) was...hokey at best.

Before All Japan Women did custom entrance music for their wrestlers, Takako Inoue came out to Van Halen's "Pretty Woman", although the intro was cut out (it went straight into the little upbeat section before the first verse, then the verse). Kyoko came out to "Panama".

I forget what territory it was, but the Rock and Roll Express used to come out to Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll".

Oh well, back to work...


Scott

[jdw]

[Iron Chad]

The Rock and Rolls have used "Old Time Rock and Roll" all over the place, indies, Memphis, usually wherever there isn't going to be a rights problem, like in WCW or WWF. I saw them probably 15-20 times over the past 15 years at USWA and indy shows between here and Alabama. They almost always used that song, except for a couple of times when the tape couldn't be found. They came out to Aldo Nova's "Fantasy" once at a bottom of the barrel indy show in Boaz, Alabama circa 1992, which was one of the funnier sights I'd seen. It was tough to figure which was more dated at the time, the RnR's gimmick with the David Lee Roth bandannas or the entrance theme.

I had a group of 3-4 close friends I watched wrestling with in high school, and the popular discussion was always "What would your wrestling theme be?". Mine was always Led Zep's "Communication Breakdown" until the Ultimate Warrior used the lame rip-off of the cool opening riff from that song as his entrance theme. After that, my "gimmick" would've been basically a redneck Sandman who could wrestle (you could buy draft beer in gallon jugs at a ton of places in Alabama -- my character would have one of those with him, swilling it on the way to the ring, this was 1990, mind you, so I was a goddamn wrestling revolutionary, damn Paul Heyman for bankrupting out my gimmick infringement claim :( , so I moved along to "Dueling Banjos" which I've always wanted a redneck wrestler to use as his theme. Much like Sandman, I would've taken my time to come out and get to the ring to make sure the song got to the cool breakdown part with both the banjo and guitar during the climax of my character's entrance.

When I toyed with the idea of wrestling and actually did a small bit of reffing and managing on the lowest indy level possible, I upgraded the theme song to "Plowed" by Sponge. Luckily I came to my senses and haven't thought about what "my wrestling entrance music" would be until I read this post. I think a general rule is unless a song fits a gimmick perfectly, it just needs to hit quick and be hard driving, especially for a babyface. Frank's idea of "Whole Lotta Love" fits this idea well, as long as you avoid the silly psychedelic bridge in the song.

One of the dudes I briefly managed had a character that was somewhere inbetween Raven and Jeff Hardy for lack of a better explanation. His theme was "Burn" by Nine Inch Nails (from the "Natural Born Killers" soundtrack), and it fit his mid 1990's quasi-intellectual burnout character to a tee and was just a really great song to come out to. Especially since a bunch of dudes were coming out to the more popular NIN songs like "Closer" (at least the indy guy I'm thinking of's gimmick was he was an enormously endowed -- thanks to a rolled up pair of sweatsocks in his trunks, which is why I didn't name the wrestler -- ladies man) or even "Head Like a Hole", which I think the wrestler I saw using it had never listened to since it had nothing to do with anything about his gimmick (he essentially was a redneck -- he couldn't help that part being from rural Kentucky -- that loved murder and demons or Satan, probably supposed to be a Crowley lover or something, it's not like they ever gave him any promo time to explain himself, and was the flunky partner of the big fat dude that had the indy's main title at the time). Considering how dumb the guy with the gimmick was, "Head Like a Hole" was appropriate, but only in a humorous or ironic sense.

Two of my very unoriginal friends (I'm warping back to high school, sorry this post is was booked by Vince Russo) were going to be a cowboy tag-team "The Regulators" (ugh, though there's a guy who's been working indies in Kentucky for years as The Regulator, he seemed to get booked somewhere a few nights a week and always had a core of vocal and dentally challenged fans). My friends' idea was to use "Wanted Dead or Alive" by Bon Jovi. Very disappointing.

BTW, I haven't been able to stand the guy's work for well over a decade, but Ric Flair's theme (I'm not even going to try to spell it) is about as good as it gets both as a song, and as an entrance for his character. The few times Flair hasn't used it (like when they had that stupid Horseman theme that started with the whinnying horse, or just didn't use it for whatever reason and went with a generic sounding trumpet fanfare), the entrance was more disappointing than the work in the ring to follow.

The only worse entrance I can think of is a wrestler called Atomic Dog, who I think had a cup of coffee or two in the latter days of the USWA coming out to a generic Geto Boyz song (not "Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta", so I don't care what it was) instead of George Clinton's "Atomic Dog". When your gimmick books your entrance theme, you've gotta use it.

-Chad

[Fong]

I can look back, now, knowing what I know about the song, and say that I don't like certain partiotic acts using Springsteen's "Born In The USA". Bill Watts and every other Mid-South babyface used it for a time, and I think I recall some mid-card WWF team using it in the mid-80's. But it worked for the times.

(Also heard that Gagne and Brunzell used "Badlands", which makes even less sense. Anyway...)

I agree with eron's comment about the first two or three seconds of WWF intros being designed to hook you in and make you pop - Austin, Hart, Rock, even DX have that hook right off the bat. But when it doesn't work (e.g. Carlito), it REALLY doesn't work.

I really enjoyed the mix of commercial music and stock soundtrack music that WCW used in the late 80's and early 90's. Sting and Luger had great entrance songs that fit them to a tee. Terry Funk used something that I recognize, but I'm not sure from where.

For me, the two best entrances were Hogan's "Real American", which was guaranteed a pretty big f'n pop night in and night out, and Midnight Express. Part of the latter were Cornette's little rants before the riff started, but the haunting nature of the synthesizer just worked so well. Also, the version they used from '86 to '89 in JCP/WCW was a little different than the original version, and I liked that a hell of a lot better.

Songs I'd want to see as intros? Metallica has used "Ecstasy of Gold" from The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly for about 20 years now. I'd love to hear that one; that would have actually fit Terry very well.

-HJF

[Kevin Tyler]

[Fong]