A great entrance theme - à la Ric Flair or 'Stone Cold' Steve Austin - can be priceless. While music has been a wrestling staple for decades, it didn't become widespread until the 1980s, with wrestlers like Hulk Hogan in the AWA, The Fabulous Freebirds in World Class Championship Wrestling, and the Junkyard Dog in Mid-South using popular songs by mainstream artists.
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As wrestling - and its association with rock music - became more popular, artists realized they were losing out and began demanding royalties. However, companies like WWE and WCW decided to produce original music in-house. While artists like Jim Johnston and Jimmy Hart weren't perfect, many of the original pieces they composed for their respective companies became legendary. However, WCW in particular also happened to feature some real stinkers - only some of which we can blame on the 'Mouth of the South.'
10 Barry Windham - 'He's Smokin'
From the 1992 WCW Slam Jam album, the 'Lone Wolf' Barry Windham's track, 'He's Smokin', was no worse (but no better) than the other 10 tracks, but unlike the rest, it was nearly exactly the same as the hit song by classic rock band Boston from their eponymous 1976 debut album.
Jimmy Papa, who received primary credit for the collection which featured classics such as 'Man Called Sting' and 'Steinerized,' was first successful with the creation of the Freebirds' 'Badstreet USA' 1983 theme and video in World Class (and Michael Hayes' subsequent 1987 album, Off the Streets). To be fair, his influence is a pretty ubiquitous part of '90s WCW, but Papa could have put a little more effort into this one, as rhyming "fun" with "Windham" is a bit of a stretch.
9 Dave Sullivan - 'I Want To Be a Hulkamaniac'
Everything about the Dave 'Evad' (Because he was dyslexic! - get it?!) Sullivan gimmick and character was a microcosm of everything bad about WCW during the two years between signing Hulk Hogan in the summer of 1994 and the creation of the nWo two years later. It was all lifted straight from the '80s WWE playbook, except this time it had the added disgrace of being an imitation.
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The former Equalizer's kayfabe brother Kevin - Hogan's main foil during this period - was upset with Dave's obsession with the Hulkster. To be fair, 'Evad's ridiculous theme - written by Jimmy Hart and songwriting partner JJ Maguire along with 10 more unintentionally hilarious tracks on the Hulk Rules album - wasn't even the worst thing about him. The gimmick was borderline offensive (think WWE's Eugene but worse), and the character didn't do his career any favors.
8 Macho Man Randy Savage - 'What Up Mach'
When Macho Man Randy Savage returned to WCW after an injury layoff in April 1999, he was much different from the character fans came to know and love over the prior decade and a half. He was suddenly more muscular than he'd been in a decade, his attire and style drifted away from the neon psychedelic cowboy look that he sported for the better part of the decade, he had a new young girlfriend at his side and, in a surprise move, completely different music.
It was totally unlike the song that everybody associates with Savage - 'Pomp and Circumstance,' which coincidentally was popularized by the original Gorgeous George as the first example of theme music ever. Instead, 'What Up Mach' was a boring, industrial-influenced track that was supposed to be edgy like the rest of his revamped presentation, but much like the rest of the Team Madness package, it was kind of bland and forgettable compared to his classic character.
7 3 Count - 'Dance With 3 Count'
WCW gets a lot of flak for not keeping up with pop culture the way WWE did during the late 1990s with its Attitude Era, but for what it's worth, each booking regime tried their respective hand at copying what was 'in' at the time. Boybands, which were huge at the time were the antithesis of what most of wrestling's core young male audience liked: largely untalented pretty boys who got by solely on their looks and appeal to teen girls.
WCW's 3 Count team of 'Sugar' Shane Helms, Shannon Moore and Evan Karagias were a surprisingly entertaining heel version of such, and their first song - written by Jimmy Hart, of course - 'Can't Get You Out Of My Heart' wasn't far off from real, charting songs at the time. However, their next song (which also served as their theme) - 'Dance With 3 Count' - was so intentionally bad it stopped being funny and showed that WCW didn't know when to stop and smell the Abercrombie cologne.
6 The Outsiders - 'Crazed' - Bash at the Beach 1996
Despite originating from the public domain as a piece of generic, somewhat edgy-sounding music, 'Rockhouse' by Frank Shelley became the nWo's classic theme. It's an instantly recognizable, repetitive earworm that became associated with one of the industry's most successful acts, which to this day brings back memories of its last true peak of mainstream relevance.
There are several reasons why it's often forgotten that Kevin Nash and Scott Hall - the Outsiders - had a similar theme of their own. It was nowhere near as cool or edgy as the nWo's, and (for Nash, at least) was immediately followed by the iconic 'Wolfpac' theme. Lastly, it's especially strange that WCW, which was of course no stranger to rip-off music, chose a 'Crazy' by Seal soundalike for wrestling's baddest heel invaders.
5 Tully Blanchard - 'The Days of My Life'
It's not a memorable name, but 'The Days of My Life' was another piece of stock music - this time a hard-driving, if fairly generic, rock song - that's much more catchy upon hearing it. Although it's also been in syndication, on television commercials and in sports highlight packages, wrestling fans from the era should immediately associate it with 'Lionheart' Chris Jericho in WCW, as it fit him as a babyface cruiserweight.
'Babyface cruiserweight' are not words we'd ever associate with Tully Blanchard, especially in 1994. However, the 'babyface' part was right at Slamboree that year for his return to the company - albeit in a 'legends' match against Terry Funk - as the former Horsemen got such a pop that it nearly drowned out the curious choice in entrance theme for him that evening.
4 Vince Russo - 'Iron Man' Ripoff
If there's one thing that we can say about Vince Russo, it's that he's always been his own biggest fan. The former WWE writer-turned-WCW 'savior' would tell you it was because he was booking himself as a heel, but if anybody knew how to be the obnoxious center of attention in a storyline nobody asked for, it would be Russo.
It was unsurprising, then, when he made self-aggrandizing decisions like anointing himself the on-screen leader of a top heel faction (shortly after claiming viewers would never see him on television) - or becoming WCW World Heavyweight Champion. His choice of theme, a Jimmy Hart-produced ripoff of Black Sabbath's classic 'Iron Man' might have been tongue-in-cheek (how could it not?), but with Russo, who knows?
3 Diamond Dallas Page - 'Teen Spirit' Intro/'Dog'
While WCW was famous (or infamous) for its '90s themes that ripped off popular alternative and rock songs of the era, to be fair to the company, several would wind up becoming sort of iconic in ways. Chris Jericho, Raven and Perry Saturn all got in on the action eventually, but the most memorable had to have been 'Diamond' Dallas Page's 'Self-High Five' theme, which was simultaneously hokey and tremendous.
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Of course, that meant that by late 2000, WCW felt compelled to fix one of the few things in the company that wasn't broken. Somebody at least had the good sense to retain the four-chord 'Teen Spirit' intro, but a record scratch into the track 'Dog' by a band named FAT (a 1997 rap-rock song by dudes who sounded like they were into Rage Against the Machine) was the swerve in Page's entrance nobody was asking for.
2 Booker T - 'The Woodchuck's Game' - SuperBrawl 2000
Booker T's unfortunate participation in one of the genre's all-time dumbest storylines - a feud with former Harlem Heat partner Stevie Ray and his new second Tony 'Big T' Norris over not just the 'Heat' name, but (seriously) the right to use the letter 'T' made him an embarrassingly-unsympathetic underdog babyface.
However, funny should not have been the goal with Booker at the time. Temporarily 'T'-less following a loss at the SuperBrawl 2000 PPV, Booker also somehow lost the rights to the (public domain!) classic theme 'Rap Sheet,' which he'd been using as a solo act while Ray was in the nWo. With everything Heat-related now stripped from the future King, Booker could've chosen nearly any other song, but was cursed with a children's cartoon-ish theme called 'The Woodchuck's Game' in a hilarious-yet-nonsensical moment.
1 Goldberg - 'Crush 'Em' by Megadeth
While Bill Goldberg was away from WCW in early 1999, he filmed Universal Soldier, and WCW predictably went all-in with cross-promotion. Heavy metal band Megadeth - who'd been successful but never saw the mainstream success their peers in Metallica did - featured their newest single 'Crush 'Em' on the film's soundtrack, and Goldberg, who was a fan of the band, wanted to bring them in.
However, their live performance of the song flopped, as - featuring a disco beat and funk guitar - it wasn't one of the more metal songs in their catalog. When Goldberg used the song - which began to be heard as much on WCW programming as Konnan's rap single - to replace his character-defining 'Invasion' theme, it was widely panned as a dud and helped to sour some fans on the whole presentation.
