The Importance of Sound -or- What's in a Theme?

Good morning! A trailer for the new Ghostbusters film, Frozen Empire, was released earlier this week. Here’s a look at it, if you wanna give it a watch:

 I’ve been a fan of the series as long as I can remember – in fact, one of my earliest memories is taking a cardboard box my mom got an AVON order in and turning it into a little Ecto-1 that I drove around inside the house. But what I never really thought about until watching this trailer last night was how effective the sound design is for me. Things like the little piano stinger when the firehouse is revealed, the Ecto-1’s unique siren, and the sound of a proton pack heating up make me feel all warm and fuzzy. I’m sure everybody has that kind of reaction to a certain sound effect, like a voice from a favorite childhood TV show, a lightsaber powering up, or the sound of Dom Toretto’s Charger engine revving up. Nostalgia in an audio format.

Wrestling fans have a different kind of stinger (no pun intended), the theme song. Entrance music has long been one of my favorite parts of pro wrestling. I’m sure a lot of fans, and even some folks who only have a tenuous connection to the sport, have thought of what song they would use for their walk to the squared circle. Kids of all ages dream of pyro exploding around them as they, in peak physical condition, pose and dance and acknowledge the crowd as they work their way down the ramp. We’ve all done it, and many of us have probably even created a version of it in a wrestling video game. 

However, recently this tradition has been diminished in WWE. I’m no insider, but from what I’ve read, Vince McMahon and the other heads of the company have decided to replace several wrestlers’ theme songs with (in my opinion) supremely diminished versions. This is due to the fact that CFO$, the producers of most of the newer WWE themes of the past several years, parted ways with the company. Many of these new versions keep the original opening sound effect or catchphrase – think Charlotte Flair’s opening notes from “Also Sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30” or Ricochet’s, well, ricochet sound. Both wrestlers’ themes still use those stingers, but the main music has been redone. It’s just enough to make the songs kinda familiar, but also enough to highlight the lousy music that replaced some really catchy songs wrestlers came out to in the past.

Here’s an example. A little over a year ago, Johnny Gargano returned to the main Raw roster, a surprise comeback with no build. Once fans registered that it was him - thanks in no small part to the Rebel Heart theme he’s used in both WWE and NXT - they went nuts!

Since then, WWE’s petty desire to redo so many of these themes turned Rebel Heart into a shell of its former self. And while I won’t go so far as to say that everybody hates this new bastard version, it does seem to be pretty universally reviled on Twitter/X.

Hard pass.

And look, everyone is going to have a different opinion about music. Wrestling is already one of those things that people have really strong opinions about, and combining that passion with varying tastes in music is going to make this an unwinnable argument for some. But can you imagine what would have happened if Bret Hart came out with a different guitar riff? If Shawn Michaels had somebody else singing “I’m Just A Sexy Boy”? Or, God forbid, if the breaking glass was followed up with a version of “Stone Cold” Steve Austin’s theme, but with words forced over the music by, I dunno, Disturbed or something?

Wait, that actually happened. Strike that last point. 

What I’m trying to say is, this music is important. It means as much to these characters as a finishing move or ring gear. And to just change it on a whim because you don’t want to pay royalties or, worse, because a corporation decided it needed to be done seems insulting to the performers and to the music’s composers. 

Bray Wyatt famously talked about how he was given a selection of tracks and found the perfect one in the Mark Crozer theme used in his Eater of Worlds persona, and re-recorded by Code Orange for The Fiend’s entrance. And in an interview with Slam Wrestling, Crozer remarked, “I think the entrance music is a massive part of the show. It helps to convey the personality of the wrestler and set the scene for what’s to come. It’s also a great way to fire up the crowd.”

Bray’s story is an exception, for the most part. The music was written for the wrestlers, in many cases. Ricochet’s theme matched his energy, a superhero-adjacent persona for a man who accomplishes impossible-looking feats in the ring night after night, the “One and Only” that he used to be nicknamed. Charlotte’s entrance music perfectly mixed old and new, paying homage to her dad’s music while layering beats on beats on top, much like how she uses the Figure 8, a modified version of the old man’s Figure Four leg lock. 

My point is, the entrance music is a part of the performance. When I attended the Royal Rumble a couple years back, it happened to coincide with this trend of theme replacement. The event where the entire fanbase is expected to explode with every one of the sixty entrants in the two Rumble matches, and that is the one WWE chose to debut a bunch of new themes. If there was ever an example of how little WWE thinks of those entrance themes affecting crowd pops, this was it. St. Louis was ready to explode for these wrestlers, but when the countdowns ended we had to wait for either an announcement or visual confirmation for many of our favorites. 

That decision further weighed down what many call one of the weakest Royal Rumbles in recent years, because fan reaction was stymied by WWE’s indifference to an important part of its wrestlers’ presentation. It was a dumb choice, and it’s one I really don’t hear a lot about. But I think theme music can make or break an entrance, and WWE had a great thing going with the CFO$ and, before them, the legendary Jim Johnston. AEW’s Mikey Ruckus has done some good work, although I admit I’m not as high on him as others. Tony Khan seems more than willing to open his pocketbook to license music, though, giving AEW another great source for entrance music.

So, I ask you, dear reader: is theme music important to wrestling, or am I weird in thinking that? What’s some of your favorite entrance music? Is it the licensed stuff, like Cult of Personality, or is it original music like Samoa Joe’s WWE theme, or Kenny Omega’s “Battle Cry”? And while I’m throwing questions out into the void, what song would you use for your entrance?

I felt like going off on a little rant this week, but I hope you were entertained. It’s been a while since my last post, but Fridays are going to be Blog Days from here on out. We have it on the schedule, working around the SlashGear output and my duties as beloved Good Family House Cholo. Next weekend, we’ll preview AEW’s Full Gear, and catch up on what’s been going on with AEW and WWE, and me. Links to all my author pages (and a little tip jar) are up on the little sidebar on the right…and I guess that’s it.

Until next time, Let’s Watch Some Wrestling!