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There has been a great deal of amazing original theme songs written for wrestlers over the years, as well as licensed music that bigger companies paid for and smaller independent companies use because they're too low-profile to be sued for it.
Then there are other cases, which see those in charge of the music lift quite a bit of the sound of a popular song and stick it onto a wrestler.
It's actually resulted in a lot of very good entrance themes, and some of the best are included here.
#7 Perry Saturn - What Are You Looking At? (Marilyn Manson’s The Beautiful People)
Perry Saturn is a massively underrated wrestler. His time in ECW as one half of The Eliminators tag team with John Kronus was very successful for both men, and he was soon picked up by WCW. After some time as a flunky in Raven’s Flock, he broke free and became a singles wrestler, but didn’t really do much of importance.
Most people who were casual fans of WCW in early 1999 may remember when Saturn wore dresses and corsets and make-up to the ring. He lost a match to Chris Jericho and was forced to wear this clothing, but ended up embracing it in a short-lived gimmick that turned out to be much better than it had any right to be.
When he started wearing dresses, he also started using a new theme song, which was almost an exact rip of Marilyn Manson’s “The Beautiful People”. This was a trend for WCW, but just like in this case, it usually worked. This theme song was awesome and worked extremely well with the bizarre character.
#6 Kurt Angle - My Quest (Red Rider's Lunatic Fringe)
Kurt Angle’s WWE theme song was recycled from the music used by past wrestler, The Patriot, and it’s a song that has become synonymous with Angle as it fits his character so well. Of course, when he left WWE in 2006, he couldn’t use the theme so TNA created a great one for him of their own.
Being that Kurt Angle is an Olympic Gold Medalist and a lifelong amateur wrestler, it was only fitting of them to use a song that is best associated with the most iconic amateur wrestling movie of all time, 1985’s Vision Quest.
Kurt would eventually use a remixed version of the theme performed by John Cena’s cousin Trademarc, which was also good, but nothing beats the original. It’s a great theme song inspired by a great real song, and a very clever, perfect fit for a wrestler like Kurt Angle.
#5 Chris Jericho - One Crazed Anarchist (Pearl Jam’s Evenflow)
Chris Jericho’s original WCW theme song was an upbeat soft-ish rock song that he didn’t like, and neither did most people. It was hokey and corny, but fitting enough for a smiling babyface. It was also a direct instrumental version of Mammoth’s “All The Days”. Soon enough his character changed, and so did his music.
He was a flamboyant heel who always thought the world was against him -- a conspiracy theorist indeed -- and needed something a little less 1980s Brat Pack and with more of an edge.
It wasn’t a perfect theme song, and it was a little light on the bass, but it was much better than what he had before. Nothing tops his iconic WWE theme song “Break The Walls Down” and I am biased because Evenflow is one of my all-time favourite songs, but this was certainly one of the better “rip-off” WCW theme songs.
#4 Monty Brown - Alpha Male (Disturbed’s Down With The Sickness)
Monty Brown, known to WWE (or, WWE’s ECW) fans as Marcus Cor Von, is a bit of an enigma in pro wrestling. In 2004, he came into TNA completely out of nowhere (he had a few brief appearances in 2002 and 2003, but they led to nothing and most people don’t even remember them) and immediately became a feared force to be reckoned with.
Brown was charismatic, energetic and unbelievably fun to watch. His finishing move, The Pounce, was the best football tackle style move used in pro wrestling. While he never won a title in TNA and had a very short-lived career in WWE due to family issues, Brown made a hell of an impact (no pun intended) during his quick run in TNA.
His theme song embodied the intensity of his persona and was a pretty well-made takeoff of one of Disturbed’s best and most well-known songs. It was edited and tweaked a few times, and each time made the song less awesome, but the original version, shown above, was just awesome.
#3 Raven - What About Me? (Nirvana’s Come As You Are)
While he was in ECW, Raven (along with most of the wrestlers) used an actual song for his theme, entering the arena to The Offspring’s “Come Out And Play”. He would use it in Ring of Honor years later as well.
When he jumped to WCW, they couldn’t just toss him out there using a real song without paying a ton of money to get it licensed (not that they couldn’t have afforded it), so they found a different song, toyed with it, and gave it to their newest tortured soul.
Raven’s persona was that of an angsty young man who looked like the embodiment of the grunge music movement, so it was an obvious choice to lift a song from the perennial grunge band, Nirvana.
WCW’s version of “Come As You Are” for Raven was slow, depressing and dark, and without lyrics, was even more effective than it would have been had they used the real song.
Later on when he joined TNA after being ousted from WWE, Raven would use an iteration of ‘Come Out And Play”, but when he dropped his cult leader gimmick and became a darker, more downtrodden soul, TNA went to the well and made their own adaptation of “Come As You Are”.
And it was way better than the version he used in WCW. Check that one out below.
#2 Sting - Slay Me (Metallica’s Seek And Destroy)
When Sting returned to active competition in WCW he marched to the ring to a very slow, brooding, epic song befitting of the Crow character that he had become. From 1999 until the end of WCW, he used the Woodstock 1999 live version of Metallica’s “Seek And Destroy”, which came out of nowhere and was ridiculously awesome.
In TNA he used a number of iterations of the song, and for the most of his tenure, he used this version, which many TNA fans claim to be their favourite theme song used by any superstar to come through the company.
It was chaotic, out-of-control and, which probably the song that sounds the least like its inspiration on this list, definitely a great theme that fit Sting during his career resurrection in TNA.
#1 DDP - Self High Five (Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit)
Of all WCW theme songs, the one that has always stuck with me the most is DDP’s “Self High Five”. Maybe it’s because I’m such a big Nirvana fan, or maybe because I was such a big DDP fan at the time.
It’s probably due to the fact that it is one of the first theme songs I recognised as a real song that I had actually heard before, and it led me down the path, many years ago, to find out what other wrestling theme songs were either rip-offs of real songs or, in some cases, the song itself.
Outside of the somewhat poorly done opening riff, the part of the song most reminiscent of the Nirvana song comes right after, where they go from a high tune to a low tune (hear it starting at 13 seconds) compared to Nirvana’s version, where it’s a much sharper low to high.
It sounds more like somebody forgot how to play the chords on their guitar than an attempt at a decent cover that wouldn’t get them sued, but hey, sue me -- I love the song!
