wrestling / Columns

The 411 Wrestling Top 5: The Top 5 Favorite Theme Songs

July 3, 2016 | Posted by Larry Csonka

Hulk Hogan WWF, Top 1980s WWE Theme Songs

Image Credit: WWE

The 411 Wrestling Top 5: Hello everyone and welcome to 411 Wrestling’s Top 5 List. We take a topic each week and all the writers here on 411 wrestling will have the ability to participate and give us their Top 5 on said topic. So, onto this week’s topic…

Week 342 – The Top 5 Finishing Moves

List your top five favorite theme songs.

Jon Butterfield
5. Kid Kash – Bawitdaba (Kid Rock) – Haters gonna hate, right? I don’t really care what anyone says, this is a fun song made all the better utililised as a wrestling theme tune especially given the fact the recipient was a talented high-flier perfectly representing the visual aesthetics and reckless daredevil nature that the rapper supposedly embodied. Kid Rock undoubtedly did far more for Kid Kash than Kash did for Rock given the former ripped off the latter almost entirely, but in my eyes this was a great two-way relationship that worked at the time – and that time happened to fall in the prime of ECW. Kash in, Rock on!

4. Sabu – Sabu Theme – Harry and the Slashtones did some good work for ECW, but none so good as Sabu’s theme. Chilled but rhythmically driven, laid back but braced with some obscure underlying threat, Sabu’s theme was basically drums, bass, and a saxophone. The real beauty of the song isn’t the song, but rather how perfectly it complemented the demented Sabu’s motivations as he took to the ECW ring. The fact it picked up tempo circa 1:50 in just worked, as did most of Sabu’s disjointed, potentially-disastrous appearances.

3. The Four Horsemen Theme – I feel that in some ways this should win given how sexy some of these guitar strains are, and how iconic the 4 Horsemen group was, so the fact I rank this number three kind of tells you I’m not going for any kind of modern rock garbage for my number one and two spots. While this is an almost perfect wrestling theme for such a brilliant, ever-evolving group of entertainers that undoubtedly inspired and out-did Evolution itself, I’ve gone for the following to represent my love of wrestling….

2. CM Punk – Cult of Personality (Living Colour) – WWE did a decent job of replacing such an iconic song by getting a very wrestling-oriented sounding song out of audience-friendly metallers Killswitch Engage, but the legacy yet remains. Cult of Personality isn’t one of my favorite songs, per say, but it’s a great, great theme tune that perfectly suited one of the biggest personalities in the industry even at a time where he was producing his best work outside WWE limitations.

1. Undertaker – Ministry Theme – What’s awesome about this song isn’t just the song – it’s the heritage. During his Ministry days, the Undertaker repeats the lines of the 1981 Merlin film where Nicol Williamson utters the line “Anal nathrach, orth’ bhais’s bethad, do che’l de’nmha”. It supposedly means “Serpent’s breath, charm of death and life, thy omen of making” depending on what source you want to quote, but however you translate it, it’s pretty awesome. It’s uttered throughout Undertaker’s guitar-heavy Ministry theme that just reeks of awesomeness (well, Edge and Christian were once in the Brood, right?) and given that there is a great British death metal band called Anaal Nathrakh who I both love and adore, and given that the quote is (nowadays) plenty obscure, and (also) given that this was a very important period for the Undertaker in both story and song, I have to say we have a hands-down winner for best wrestling theme.

Kevin Pantoja
5. “Broken Dreams” – Drew McIntyre – This is easily the hardest list I’ve had to do. I can think of so many fantastic themes in wrestling. Shinsuke Nakamura, multiple AJ Styles themes, Randy Orton, every Christian theme, Sandman, Jeff Hardy’s solo theme, Miz, Steve Austin, Sasha Banks and the list goes on and on. My final choice isn’t one that would be considered iconic. Instead of going for ones that have been around forever (HHH, HBK, Undertaker, etc.) I chose one of my personal favorites. Drew McIntyre debuted in the WWE and I didn’t care much. For some reason, once he got this theme, something about him seemed cool to me. I still listen to this theme on a regular basis and will probably never stop.

4. “Line in the Sand” Evolution – Motorhead and Triple H have gone together like rice and beans (that’s how you know I’m Hispanic) for a long time. From “The Game” to “King of Kings”, it works, though my favorite solo HHH theme was “My Time”. However, their crowning achievement together would be the theme used for Evolution. Watching Triple H, Ric Flair, Batista and Randy Orton walk to the ring like they owned it while this played was perfect. It was one of the best blends of a theme being awesome and fitting the characters perfectly.

3. “Cult of Personality” – CM Punk – CM Punk is similar to Edge, Christian and AJ Styles in that he never had a bad theme. From using this and AFI in Ring of Honor to his excellent “This Fire Burns” theme for most of his WWE run, they all rule. After capturing the WWE Title in an epic match at Money in the Bank 2011, Punk left TV for about a week. He returned and this theme played, which blew my mind considering the use on the indies and WWE not usually wanting to pay royalties for things like this. Something about this song was perfect for Punk. He was a rebel and this song played right into that. While he had the Killswitch Engage theme for longer, this one is more memorable as it was his during the highest point of his career. When Living Colour played him to the ring at WrestleMania 29, it was easily the highlight of that show.

2. “The Final Countdown” – Bryan Danielson – I have more fond memories of this song than any other in wrestling. From 2006-2009, I attended a TON of Ring of Honor shows. One of the very best thing about going to those shows was watching Bryan Danielson come to the ring. He didn’t do anything flashy during his entrance, but “The Final Countdown” was given “Enter Sandman” like treatment. The crowd would sing along and not just the chorus. We knew every single word and belted it out each time. The song is a favorite of mine in general, but the association with Bryan has made it very special to me. I can’t put into words exactly how I felt when this theme would hit, but understand that I lost my voice more than once during a Danielson entrance.

1. “Metalingus” – Edge – The pinnacle of wrestling themes. Edge has had great themes (the Brood and Rob Zombie come to mind) but this was untouchable. The simple “You Think You Know Me”, stemming from Edge’s early days, right into the incredible music by Alter Bridge was perfect. Most great wrestling themes have a significant opening and this one covered that. I don’t know exactly what it was, but this just perfectly suited Edge. The lyrics ruled, the actual music itself was all kinds of great and I still, to this day, listen to it very often. The fact that it was the theme for pretty much my favorite wrestler of all-time and you’ve got a clear cut winner.

Rob Stewart
5. Bayley (Turn it Up) – Okay, so when I first saw this Top 5 category, my initial thought was “Well, that’s a weird one”. Then when I put a few seconds into thought into it, it seemed way too easy to just blow through. But now that I have 2 dozen tabs of intro tunes that I like that I have to narrow down to 5? Now it’s annoyingly difficult. There are just way too many songs I’m leaving off the list (Quick shout-outs to the theme songs for Shinsuke Nakamura, Chris Jericho, Shawn Michaels, any of HHH’s, Hulk Hogan, Kurt Angle, and Sami Zayn), but I’ve got to go with Bayley’s for the last spot. It’s so bubbly and infectious, like the woman herself, and you can’t help but be in a good mood when it exposed it.

4. The Miz (I Came To Play, Hollywood Intro version 2) – To me, this is one of the more sneaky good songs in all of wrestling history, to the point where I didn’t even realize I was a fan off it until it came up on Pandora one day while I was driving. I listened to it, and it just clicked with me that day. It’s a fun song.

3. Sasha Banks (Sky’s The Limit) – I think it was Takeover Brooklyn where I first REALLY noticed how spot-on perfect this song was for Sasha, with just flourishes of movement that she adds and the way she has everything timed in it with her entrance. She really just owns this tune. I even dug the Snoop Dogg rendition of it that he did for WrestleMania 32.

2. Edge (Metalingus, 2011 onward) – Okay first of all–and I didn’t know this until I looked it up for this–Edge’s theme song was called METALINGUS? That’s ridiculous. Anyway, I always thought this tune checked all the boxes: it had a grand opening that signified who was coming out right away, it was fast and heavy, it had words (I always tend to prefer the SONGS over just music), and it fit the wrestler perfectly.

1. Randy Orton (Burn In My Light, 2nd Edit) – I always hated that a wrestler I could never stand had my favorite song in the WWE, but I dug this song. “Voices” is good, too, but I always thought this, his previous song, was vastly superior. This was the official entrance music of any CAW I made in Raw vs. Smackdown while Orton was rocking this. If only it heralded the arrival of a guy I actually wanted to see in the ring.

Ryan Byers
5. “Break Down the Walls” – Chris Jericho – This is one that has stood the test of time, and the fact that it’s been so beloved for so long is indicative of its quality. On a personal level, I’ve loved this theme song forever because Chris Jericho’s WWF debut was one of the most exciting moments that I’ve ever had as a professional wrestling fan, because my friends and I were all massive supporters of Jericho’s work in WCW and were overjoyed to see him in a new role where he might be taken more seriously as a headliner. Not only did we get to see his debut, but we also got to see a phenomenally-executed debut, and a major part of it was the entrance paired with the original theme song, which fit the era and the character like a glove. Ever since then, hearing that first note takes a small part of my wrestling fandom back to that memorable moment.

4. “Tokyo GO!” / “Mr. Egoist” – Magnum TOKYO – WCW/Toryumon/Dragon Gate/HUSTLE alumnus Magnum TOKYO has had two absolutely tremendous theme songs, tremendous to the point that I’m not going to try to choose between them. He started with “Tokyo GO!” but later moved on to “Mr. Egoist.” In some ways the two songs are similar, as they’re both high energy dance club music, but they have enough unique elements that the second in no way feels derivative of the first. Instead, “Mr. Egoist” feels like a natural evolution of “Tokyo GO!” These songs blended perfectly with TOKYO’s entrance, as remixing them was simple and allowed for variant entrances for big events, which typically saw the wrestler flanked by an entire troupe of dancing girls. There were great visuals, there was a great beat . . . and let’s just say that I’ve been flying down the interstate on more than one occasion while rocking out to bot of these songs.

3. “Ikari No Jushin” – Jushin Liger – Jushin Liger has had several themes over his decades-long career, but my favorite is the song that inspired it all. Before the character of Liger stepped into a professional wrestling ring, it was actually the star of an anime series, and “Ikari No Jushin” (which translates roughly to “Jushin’s Rage,” as I understand it) was the theme song for the television series. The tune may come off as a bit cheesy to somebody who is looking at it with modern eyes, but once you realize that Jushin Liger’s character was originally that of a cartoon superhero come to life, the over-the-top guitars and teenage-sounding singers belting out his name in awe all make sense.

2. “Real American” – Hulk Hogan – With apologies to my fellow contributors, if you don’t have this song someplace on your list, you’re trying too hard. Wrestlers had theme music before “Real American,” going at least as far back as Gorgeous George, but this was the song that made music an integral part of a wrestler’s entrance and, more importantly, his brand. It also really popularized the practice of having original music penned for use by a wrestler based around his character . . . even though the character in question was originally the U.S. Express tag team of Mike Rotunda and Barry Windham as opposed to the Hulkster. The riffs to open this song are iconic, it keeps the listener jacked up throughout its duration, and it is damn near timeless. It’s also perhaps the only wrestling theme to ever cross over into the popular consciousness, as many non-wrestling fans will hear the song and know to associate it with Hogan. Heck, it was even used at a White House Correspondents’ Dinner several years back as President Barack Obama’s entrance music.

1. “Badstreet, U.S.A.” – The Fabulous Freebirds – Though “Real American” beats it out in terms of mainstream crossover value, there’s nothing better within the realm of professional wrestling than “Badstreet, U.S.A.” Michael “P.S.” Hayes growling into his microphone over a slow drum beat that escalates throughout the course of the song perfectly sets the tone for the Fabulous Freebirds. The song tells you that these guys are badasses, but the fact that they’ve taken time to write and record a song about what huge badasses they are tells you that they’re arrogant SOB’s as well, people who you would like to see taken down a peg. It was the perfect challenge to the Freedbirds’ opponents, as the group basically said, “Yeah, we know that we piss you off . . . but you’re not going to be able to do anything about it.” Badstreet, U.S.A. . . the ultimate squad goal.