10 Terrible Original Songs From Pro Wrestling History

9. “With My Baby Tonight” – Jeff Jarrett

Ah yes, Jeff Jarrett, the country music star with one song that he didn’t even sing (shockingly, real country music stars don’t become wrestlers). It’s a shame nobody has ever liked Jeff Jarrett, because perhaps this song might be remembered in a more positive light. But between Jarrett being annoying, then WWE running a smear campaign once he went back to WCW based around the fact he didn’t sing his own songs (which nobody, anywhere, ever, actually cared about when watching a show where people pretend to fight each other) and trying to push Jesse James as “The Real Double J”, leading to the song being played past the point of sanity on WWE TV, backlash was guaranteed.

8. “Rap is Crap” – The West Texas Rednecks

We have to confess, this song (even though it’s really short) isn’t actually that bad, but the story around it is a microcosm of the mistakes WCW was making right up until its demise. You see, WCW paid a lot of money to bring in Master P and the No Limit Soldiers, a popular rap group at the time. Then, they created The West Texas Rednecks, which was literally just a group of wrestlers with nothing better to do, who were vehemently anti-rap, and therefore opposed to Master P. They even made up this song, which actually ended up finding its way into rotation in some country radio stations! The problem is, the Rednecks were being portrayed as heels, which backfired for several reasons: they were more entertaining, they were actually wrestlers (including the popular Curt Hennig), and WCW’s territory was largely based in the southern United States, where country music is something similar to a religion, and gangster rap is…decidedly not. Rather than just switch the groups’ alignments, WCW killed the whole thing off, probably because that was the easier option.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVu3cwHOQTY

7. “Wrestlerock Rumble” – AWA Wrestlerock ’86

NFL fans should remember the famous “Super Bowl Shuffle”, when the Chicago Bears made a music video that swept the nation for being ridiculously cheesy in the best possible way. Well, if there’s one thing professional wrestling loves to do, it’s to copy popular cultural phenomenons, but do it in the worst way possible. And so, in order to promote their upcoming Wrestlerock ’86 show, the AWA made their own version of the “Super Bowl Shuffle”, called the “Wrestlerock Rumble”, which featured all the stars of the promotion (you’ll see a young Shawn Michaels, Curt Hennig, and Scott Hall among the participants) rapping their way through the worst song masquerading as an advertising jingle ever heard.

6. “Don’t Step To Ron” – Ron Simmons

At some point, WCW decided that they needed to compete with the flashy, entertainment-based juggernaut that was WWE, after years of steadfastly remaining an organization that promoted wrestling above anything else. The result was WCW Slam Jam, an album containing new and original theme songs for many of their wrestlers. And each one was more horrible than the last, often done in styles that had nothing to do with the wrestler they were attempting to represent. That didn’t stop WWE from using them all as entrance music for a long time, though. Realistically, we could have picked anything from the track list for this example, but there’s something about “Don’t Step To Ron”, the music developed for Ron Simmons (who was being portrayed as a serious, solid athlete due to his legendary football career at Florida State University) that is just terribly, hilariously wrong on so many levels.

5. “Tell Me A Lie” – Shawn Michaels Tribute

This would probably be a nice little song for a tribute to a wrestler who was being forced to retire due to injury. Unfortunately, this song was for Shawn Michaels, who was not planning to retire, and in fact, was injured due to mouthing off to a group of Marines at a bar in 1995, and forced to forfeit the Intercontinental title as a result. WWE used it to attempt to garner sympathy for Shawn, as part of the plan to have him make a miraculous comeback and go on to win the WWF Championship at WrestleMania XII. The song is every terrible love ballad you’ve ever heard, directed at a man who played the gimmick of a male prostitute (wait, what did you think he was supposed to be?), and who was only sidelined due to being a gigantic ass. It could have been worse, we suppose, they could have done the video after he faked a career-ending injury and claimed to have “lost his smile” in 1997. In case you were wondering, Shawn Michaels doesn’t get a lot of sympathy for his attitude during his initial stint in WWE, before he changed his life around and made a comeback in 2002.

4. “Crush ‘Em” – Goldberg

After taking himself out for months with an injury due to punching a limousine window as part of a backstage segment (we’re not joking, he wasn’t supposed to use his first, and he nearly died from blood loss), Goldberg was ready to return, and WCW had the perfect way to have him make his comeback: they had Megadeath play their new song on Nitro and had Goldberg return in an explosion of pyrotechnics. It was an admittedly impressive moment that led to a terrible decision. Instead of continuing to use Goldberg’s old entrance music, which had fit the character to a T, they started using the Megadeath song, which was terrible (to be fair, WCW probably paid a lot of money for it). Fans did not react well, and Goldberg’s classic theme returned quickly.

3. “Right Time (To Get Crunk)” – R-Truth

There came a point in WWE history where R-Truth had been exhorting fans to chant “What’s Up?” for so long, that it had basically lost all meaning. Fortunately, he’s a decently talented musician, so he came up with a new song to rap on the way to the ring. And you have to give WWE credit, they put a lot of effort into trying to make Truth’s new song popular. They paired him up with Eve Torres to dance with him, they let him sing basically the entire song as part of his entrance, which was now full of all the flashing lights and camera tricks you could ever want, and they even showed it as a music video a couple of times when he wasn’t wrestling on that particular night.

And then someone let them know what “getting crunked” meant. If you were also not aware, it’s slang for “getting crazy drunk”. It has other meanings as well, but that was pretty much the one which raised some eyebrows.

R-Truth went back to his old music shortly afterwards.

2. “Piledriver” – Koko B Ware

This song, probably more than anything he actually did in the ring, is why Koko B Ware deserves to be in the WWE Hall of Fame. Not because the song was any good, because it wasn’t, but because Koko put up with using it as his entrance music after it was released. They even played it as part of his Hall of Fame induction video! Who wouldn’t want to be forever associated with a song about how love is like a piledriver, with a music video featuring WWE Superstars pretending to be construction workers? When WWE banned the actual Piledriver maneuver from being used, they should have also banned this song.

1. “Stand Back” – Vince McMahon

Yes, it’s the classic song performed by Vince McMahon and a cast of WWE Superstars, at the live airing of the 37th Annual Slammy Awards (back when they were a joke and not treated like legitimate awards)! Apparently Vince saw “Wrestlerock Rumble” and thought he could do better. He was incorrect. Many wrestlers have talked about how ridiculous the whole thing was, but to Vince, it was no joke. “Stand Back” was his message to the wrestling world that WWE was coming, and everyone else needed to get out of the way. Well, it turns out he was right, and WWE went on to dominate the global landscape. We just wish he hadn’t delivered his message of world domination through song.

Stephen Randle

Stephen Randle is an avid wrestling and film fan. He's been writing about WWE, movies, and video games for Goliath since 2015.