Before we begin this piece, allow me a moment of personal indulgence to explain my absence. It has now been around three weeks since I last posted on this website and, I promise, I have my reasons. Three weeks ago my second daughter was born and, as I’m sure you can appreciate, this has taken up a large portion of my time. But I’m back now!

Now that we’ve covered that, how about we delve into that second part I promised you? Last time I discussed entrance music I talked about some of the forgotten gems; music that kicked ass but was condemned to the back of the mind. This week, I’m going to dredge up some real blemishes on the past. Music that just didn’t resonate but we had to hear week after week. Today I present to you; five entrance themes that really didn’t work. Remember to click on the names to hear these train wrecks.

Lance Storm

I’m going to say this from the off. Lance Storm never had a good theme in WWE. When he was a heel, the music was so generic it may as well have gone hand in hand with the blank canvas you get when creating a wrestler on a WWE video game. When he was a part of the Unamericans, a stable I rate quite highly, it felt like the goal was to put out the least creative national anthem sounding theme possible. They succeeded but national anthems seldom make it onto playlists. And then there is this abomination. WWE decided Lance Storm should be a babyface who liked to dance. I have absolutely no idea why and I dare say neither did Storm. The music would fit a fun loving gimmick if the gimmick matched the wrestler. In this circumstance the hyped up techno drone did not match the wrestler at all.

Kung Fu Naki

Often I sit and consider what it would like to be a fly in the wall in certain moments from wrestling history. This decision, however, is one I am glad I was not privy to. Not only is the gimmick racially insensitive but parodying the Carl Douglas single “Kung Fu Fighting”, a song often accused of being racist feels wholly inappropriate. As far as a song goes, it achieves its goal I suppose. Within seconds of it starting you know who is coming out and it hits all the notes that you just know would have McMahon stumbling out the words “such good shit” between laughing and slapping backs. Even if you take away the racist undertones of this theme, it is just not good. It is boring, it is repetitive and it just comes across as a poor attempt at lowbrow comedy.

Rey Mysterio

Put the pitch forks down, I am not coming after “Booyaka 619”. Instead I am going to bring you all back to when I was a boy. WCW was in full swing and the cruiserweight division was flying high. (Pun entirely intended.) A cornerstone of the division was the future WWE Champion, Rey Mysterio. WCW decided one of the most exciting men to grace a ring needed a theme that should have been accompanying the Dustin Rhodes character Seven. It is slow, boring and very clearly miscast. I understand Mysterio was supposed to be a mysterious character, however, this theme sucked the excitement out of a Rey Mysterio match before it even started and he would have to fight to get attention back on the in-ring product. A prime example of this is the 1997 Halloween Havoc match between himself and the late Eddie Guerrero. A classic by any stretch yet the crowd was entirely uninvested. The Filthy Animals theme would fix it a little bit, but instead of sounding like underground hip hop as intended it sounded like a Backstreet Boys instrumental. WCW did not do Mysterio justice as far as composition went.

Rob Van Dam

Fair warning if you click on the link above; it does use a quite hard swear word. When Rob Van Dam made his first jump to TNA you knew how it was going to go. And lo & behold, within months he was the World Champion of the then second largest promotion in America and, being honest, the theme fit him. It had a punk/stoner feel with that guitar riff but that was about it. It is the kind of song that felt like it was always trying to get going, almost like it was stuck in its intro segment. The drums almost begged for something harder to kick in and make this theme some kind of nu metal smash but instead it sounded like a thirty second loop made using FruityLoops while someone got angry about RVD’s name and his move set. I listened to this song in its entirety as I wrote this entry and it clocks in at 3:03 but somehow felt like three hours and three minutes. It really is dull.

Chuck Palumbo

YOU WILL REMEMBER ME! Will I? I will be very honest here, I used this song as a question on a quiz I recently hosted on my Twitch channel and I don’t think anyone got it right when I asked who it belonged to. Do not get me wrong, again this song fits its purpose as it certainly sounds like the kind of music that would accompany a biker gang in a very low budget movie. But that is the problem; it sounds cheap. It feels as though it was composed in around twenty minutes and as a result instead of sounding badass and dominating it sounds tedious. Palumbo was by no means a bad wrestler but he was also not a great one. He fell comfortably into that mediocre midcard slot that we saw rotated around so much during the 00’s and became forgettable as a result, and this theme goes right alongside that.

And there we have it. Five themes that, in my opinion, were so bad they have been consigned to the memory dump just like Bing Bong. Yes, I went there. In all seriousness, it is great to be back writing for the website.

I would like to make another personal statement here. One of our behind the scenes leaders, Wilf, is hanging up his editorial hat with us soon and I would just like to thank him for all the help he has given the site to help it to grow and say he will be dearly missed by all of us. Thank you, Wilf.