Top 7 1980s Non-WWE Theme Songs

We had a lot of fun last time ranking some of the best WWE themes from the 1980s. My original intention was to keep moving down the Titan road into the 90s, 2000s and so on. After giving it some thought, I decided it was better to hang out in the 1980s for just a little bit longer. Even if the World Wrestling Federation was running everybody into the ground, they weren’t the only ones sending their wrestlers out to the ring accompanied by music. Plenty of non-WWF talent had memorable themes that should be given similar recognition.

Today we’ll be looking at seven of the most memorable non-WWE 1980s theme songs, along with some fun honorable mentions. I’m pretty sure this all happened during the 1980s too, so there’s an added bonus!

7. “Hot Stuff” – Donna Summer

It’s been too long since I’ve had occasion to mention one of my favorite wrestlers of all time: “Hot Stuff” Eddie Gilbert. Eddie was one of those wrestling geniuses who might not have had the physical attributes but had the intelligence to go a lot farther in wrestling than people expected. He was a top star all sorts of places, though it took some convincing of a lot of promoters to make it happen. Of course I was too young to see much of his career as it happened, but the footage I’ve seen has been uniformly excellent. Plus, the dude married Missy Hyatt AND Madusa. That in itself is Hall of Fame level in my book.

Disco and wrestling goes together almost as well as rock and wrestling, as the usage of “Hot Stuff” as Gilbert’s theme proved. I can’t imagine the man having any other theme, or any other nickname.

6. “Another One Bites The Dust” – Queen

As catchy as “Grab Them Cakes” might be, it wasn’t really in consideration for the WWE version of this list. See, I was far more impressed by the Mid-South version of JYD, before he left New Orleans and got paid to do less. Well, he did more travel, which led to more issues, but you know what I mean. Mid-South JYD was a lean, mean fighting machine, while the Dog that told us to grab somebody’s cakes wasn’t quite the same.

Besides, how could anybody have hoped to top a Queen song as entrance music for any wrestler? One simply did not out-sing or out-perform Freddie Mercury. The song perfectly fit the situation too, as many a wrestler would come into the Mid-South and be forced to bite the dust by the Junkyard Dog.

5. “Chase” – Giorgio Moroder

I’ll be honest with you guys: I’ve never seen the movie that spawned the name of pro wrestling’s greatest heel team of the 1980s. Is it on a streaming service? Anyway, the score of Midnight Express won an Academy Award & the single “Chase” made the Billboard Hot 100 during 1979. Since wrestling has always ripped off everything, a group called The Midnight Express formed in the Tennessee area around the time. Dennis Condrey was one of the men involved, and when Bill Watts wanted him to form a tag team with Bobby Eaton managed by Jim Cornette a couple of years later, the Midnight Express name was revived.

“Chase” was the perfect choice to use as the Express’ theme song, and became associated with each member for the rest of their careers. Prior to that, Angelo Poffo’s ICW promotion used “Chase” as their theme & bumper music, and I’m sure that countless other wrestling shows did the same.

4. “Tom Sawyer” – Rush

Hindsight being 20/20, nobody’s very surprised that Kerry Von Erich didn’t become the biggest wrestling star of the 1980s. The drugs, distractions & injuries kept Kerry from becoming that tippy top guy. If you were living in that era and keeping up with our so called sport, you remember how heavily pushed Kerry was by World Class & the wrestling magazines. He had the look & a certain charisma about him, and with the right wrestlers he could get the job done in the ring. Not knowing all of the behind the scenes issues or physical limitations Kerry had, it was easy to believe that he could be a long-term World Champion.

He also had a pretty kickass entrance tune. World Class really dove into the rock music sensation head-on, and Kerry using “Tom Sawyer” as his theme was one of the more memorable entrances of the era. It gave him the nickname of “Modern Day Warrior”, which became attached to his name up until his WWF arrival. Heck, he was even included in “The Warriors” Survivor Series team, so it’s not like it was completely swept under the rug.

3. “Also Sprach Zarathustra (Sunrise)” – Richard Strauss

A wrestler as epic as Ric Flair was needed some epic theme music. There are few better places to look for epic themes than in Stanley Kubrick movies, and one from 2001: A Space Odyssey was a particularly inspired choice. Before the opening fanfare of “Also Sprach Zarathustra” was the theme for Barbie, Elvis Presley concerts and seemingly everything else under the sun, it was in 2001. Before that, it was a tone poem (don’t hear many of those anymore) composed by Richard Strauss back in 1896 based off of Friedrich Nietzsche’s novel of the same name.

An odd origin for the theme music of the greatest wrestler of all time, but it certainly worked. When you heard the opening notes of this tune, no matter what version was being used at the time, you knew that the sun was about to rise on the wrestling earth.

2. “Iron Man” – Black Sabbath

If there’s been a more fearsome tag team in wrestling than the Road Warriors during their prime, I haven’t seen them. Hawk & Animal carved their way through every promotion they worked for like a hot knife through butter. The facepaint, shoulder pads, haircuts & chiseled bodies helped Paul Ellering’s Legion of Doom stand out from the pack…even the pack of wrestlers that looked to imitate them.

Of course, Ozzy & crew helped Hawk & Animal out with the intimidation factor. When those first chords of “Iron Man” hit, fans never failed to lose their minds. Opponents never failed to lose their fecal matter. It was a perfect marriage of a fearsome tag team with a dark, ominious song.

Honorable Mention: “Midnight Rider” – Allman Brothers

The Midnight Rider wasn’t a full-time wrestler. He had a knack for showing up when a top babyface had been banished from a territory by chicanery. The first time was in Florida, after Dusty Rhodes lost a cage match to Kevin Sullivan that resulted in him having to leave the state for sixty days. The Rider would leave Florida right around the time Dusty’s sixty days were up. The next time we saw the Rider was in the Mid-South area, just after Bill Watts lost a match where he would have to leave for ninety days. Unfortunately, enough people were familiar enough with the Florida angle that Mid-South didn’t get the same amount of success out of promoting it. By the time the Rider came back in 1988 WCW, nobody was all that interested in seeing the same exact act again, down to very similar videos.

Still a good song though, in its various versions.

Honorable Mention: “Man With A Harmonica” – Ennio Morricone

1989 NWA has gotten vast praise from online reviewers for decades now, with one of the main reasons being Terry Funk’s run against Ric Flair. The middle aged & crazy Funk going after another World Championship against the Nature Boy made for some compelling television. The usage of the “Once Upon A Time In The West” theme accentuated the darkness in Funk’s persona during the time period. The only reason it doesn’t make the top seven is the fact that Funk only used this theme for a few months.

Honorable Mention: “Easy Lover” – Phil Collins

Speaking of short-term theme music, I couldn’t believe it when I watched Ric Flair vs. Barry Windham from Battle of the Belts 2 and saw the Naitch come out to this song instead of his usual. Yeah, Strauss fit Flair better, but Phil Collins made for a pretty awesome change of pace. Honestly, Flair probably could have come out to “Yakety Sax” and made it work during the 1980s.

1B. “Freebird” – Lynyrd Skynyrd
1A. “Badstreet USA” – Michael Hayes & the Fantasia Band

Many old-time pro wrestlers have taken credit for the whole concept of entrance music. Few have taken as much credit for it as Michael Hayes has over the years, and quite frankly, few deserve as much credit. Even if select wrestlers coming out to music predated Hayes’ career by at least two decades, it was the Freebirds’ usage of the Skynyrd classic (along with using the name for their group) that really made decision-makers think “Hey, maybe we should do that with everybody!”.

As good as “Freebird” was, there was still a way to kick things up another level. How about having a wrestler perform their own entrance music? Hayes wasn’t the first wrestler to try & take up singing, but fans hadn’t seen or heard anything on the level of “Badstreet USA”. It set the stage for everything we’d see afterwards from Jacques Rougeau to Shawn Michaels to even Men on a Mission. It’s also one of those songs that if you don’t like it, I’m pretty sure you don’t like sunshine, butterflies or anything else good in life.

Thanks for reading! Hit me up at [email protected] or on the social media with thoughts, comments or suggestions. Until next time, true believers!