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Music is very important in the world of professional wrestling. Give a wrestler the wrong theme song, and you could inadvertently bury him under a pile of mish-mashed guitar riffs that he can barely dig himself out of.
A great song can create the perfect mood and atmosphere, and the same goes for theme songs that go along with specific events. Remember the epic video package for the Stone Cold vs. The Rock match at WrestleMania x-Seven? The choice to use Limp Bizkit’s “My Way” made an epic video package into something legendary, and the event itself didn’t disappoint either.
There are tons of great examples, but WWE has dropped the ball their fair share of times when it comes to choosing music for an upcoming event. Here are the five worst WWE pay-per-view theme songs of all time.
#5 “Chinese Democracy” - Guns ‘n Roses (Armageddon 2008)
In what was one of the most notorious jokes in music circles in the late 90s and early 2000s, Axl Rose promised the epic “Chinese Democracy” song and album of the same name going back all the way to the mid-1990s after they released their last (at the time) studio album in 1994. It was going to come out, it was just about ready, they were putting the finishing touches on it, and then it wasn’t ready.
More finishing touches. More tweaks, rewrites, retoolings, what have you. GNR started recording in 1997 and it was originally slated for a 2000 release, but it was held back for 8 full years. Nobody believed it would ever come to light, and when it did, it was… okay? Certainly not worth the decade of hype that led to the band’s first studio release in 14 years.
The song was released in October 2008, followed by the album a month later, and WWE grabbed it one month later for their final pay-per-view event of 2008, Armageddon. The event, which turned out to be the final of its name, was just fine, with the most memorable moment being Jeff Hardy winning his first WWE Championship.
I guess the song sort of fits an Armageddon type scenario if you stretch, but it’s mostly just a weird, pseudo-political song about nothing in particular. It was a decent enough rock song, but it was a disappointment and felt weird as a WWE show theme song, so it kicks off this list.
#4 “Build A Bridge” - Limp Bizkit (Survivor Series 2003)
WWE chose one of Limp Bizkit’s “ballad” type songs, 2003’s “Build A Bridge” to provide the main soundtrack to their annual November PPV event. It’s actually a pretty decent song, with hints of the incredible “My Way” song that was used only a little over two years earlier for WrestleMania in 2001 peppered in. But it felt like Fred Durst and company were just trying extremely hard for something epic, and it didn’t really happen. It was like the okay sequel to the fantastic original movie, but they tried to recreate it and the magic wasn’t there the second time around.
Although it had plenty of the heavy rock sound you would expect to play during a wrestling event, it was a very corny song with cliches left and right and up and down. It was a disappointing song choice for one of WWE’s “Big Four” PPV events.
#3 “Crossing Borders” - Rey Mysterio (No Way Out 2004)
It was a fitting song for the show since it was the night Eddie Guerrero would challenge, and ultimately defeat, Brock Lesnar to win the WWE Undisputed Championship. The song comes from the WWE Originals album. If you don’t remember it, feel lucky. The album featured a number of songs, all sung by the wrestlers themselves. Check them out on YouTube if you are a true glutton for punishment.
Some of the songs were so bad that they were good, a couple were actually pretty okay, a few were intentionally dumb and ended up being great (Kurt Angle’s “I Don’t Suck” for example), but then there was “Crossing Borders”. Rey Mysterio tried (I assume) very hard to rap in English and Spanish, and it sucked both ways. Honestly, it’s just a bad song. There’s no soul to it.
Rey sounds bored, the music is generic and repeats on a short loop and the lyrics are, just like the rest of the song, extremely generic. It’s not an okay song, it’s not “so bad it’s good”, it’s just a really bad song that we should probably stop talking about. And it was the theme for one of the most historic title changes of the last two decades.
#2 “Snow (Hey Oh)” - Red Hot Chili Peppers (WrestleMania 24)
It’s ironic because there’s no snow in Florida! One would assume that’s what WWE originally thought when they decided to go with the song. It was popular at the time, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were going strong after some time away, and the music video was all about the band’s appreciation for their fans, so how could this not be a perfect theme for the biggest event of the year?
Oh no, wait. What? The song was about lead singer Anthony Kiedis’ drug addiction? He didn’t want to just build forts with his fans and hurl balls of ice across a field for fun and merriment? Oh. Well then. WWE, as you might expect, stopped using so heavily in their promotion of the show and focused more on Rev Theory’s “Light It Up” instead. Based on the lyrics, that song is about drugs and alcohol too.
#1 “Control” - Puddle of Mudd (Survivor Series 2001)
If you’re looking at the title alone, this is great. The main event of the 2001 edition of Survivor Series was the WWF vs. the WCW/ECW Alliance for control of the company. Great! In fact, much like the 2017 edition, all of the matches (except for one, which was the Light Heavyweight Title/Cruiserweight Title match) were WWF vs. Alliance. The two sides were fighting, once and for all, for control of the company.
The problem is that the lyrics are incredibly inappropriate for use with a wrestling show. And I’m not talking about the PG era since this was long before that. Check out some of the lyrics:
“I like it when you chain me to the bed // But then your secrets never shone”
“I love the way you look at me // I love the way you smack my a** // I love the dirty things you do // I have control of you”
(You can find the lyrics floating all over the internet.)
That second set of lyrics was repeated four times in a row, for the record.
It’s a song about a back-and-forth relationship based on sex, power, and control all mixed up into one insane love song. Because that’s what this is. It’s a twisted take on a love song. I personally really enjoy it, and it sounds absolutely spectacular for use as a PPV theme song, but if you listen to the lyrics, you might feel differently.
