Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0HSOaDN7FQ

Sing with the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW)




Around 1985 Vince McMahon came up with the idea of "Rock N' Wrestling" and the golden age of wrestling novelty music began. Before that time, there had only been a few noteworthy wrestling related songs released, such as the much loved Freddie Blassie Classic "Pencil Neck Geek". Hopefully someday I'll get my hands on the hard to find "Wrestling Rocks" LP from Rhino so that I can finally hear such other tunes from that era as "Who Will Dispute the Genius of Lou Albano" by the Foreign Objects or "The Body Rules" by Jesse Ventura.

Follow up:

WWF's The Wrestling Album is without a doubt the best record they ever released. In the following years Vince McMahon would try to recapture the magic twice with the follow-ups 'Piledriver' and 'Wrestlemania'. With the exception of a few songs such as 'Speaking from the Heart' (MP3 here) by Machoman Randy Savage, few the tunes on these two albums came close to the quality of "Eat Your Heart Out Rick Springfield" or "Captain Lou's History of Music".


MTV was still a pretty new phenomenon when the first wrestling album came out, so I'm not sure if any videos were ever made for it. By the time of Piledriver's release however, MTV was all the rage and the WWF wanted to take full advantage. Here are some great videos I've found on YouTube from the Piledriver and Wrestlemania albums:
Koko B Ware: Piledriver

Slick: Jive Soul Bro
Mean Gene and Rick Deringer: Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo

Honky Tonk Man: Honky Tonk Man (Live performance at the Slammies)*
If you're willing to drop some cash, you can find a few more here.




One of the greatest products of the "Rock N' Wrestling" connection isn't really a novelty song at all, but was this epic 12 minute long Cyndi Lauper video for "The Goonies" which among other things teaches us that Japanese food is only for evil wrestlers and pirates. It features almost all the biggest names in wrestling during the 80's, including Classy Freddie Blassie, The Iron Sheik, The Fabulous Moolah, Nikolai Volkov, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Captain Lou Albano and Andre the Giant. Conspicuous by his absence is Hulk Hogan, who I guess must have been too busy making this video with Dolly Parton. Of course the Hulkster was a huge star back in the 80's and even had a music video of his own. While he didn't sing his theme song "Real American", he did however record an album called "Hulk Hogan and the Wrestling Boot Band". How his heart wrenching song 'Hulkster in Heaven' didn't win him any Grammies I'll never understand.



While songs by wrestlers are quite rare these days, it was nice to see that grapplers of our local Michinoku wrestling league are doing what they can to keep Rock N' Wrestling alive. I was fortunate enough to find online this neat video for Kesen Numajirou's single "Soul of the Sea". The Great Sasuke must really like singing too, as he has also released several albums. As I mentioned in the last post, Michinoku's Sato twins also released a single called "Keep on Journey" which you can watch them sing with Sasuke at the end of this video clip. Apparently a few weeks ago after turning heel, the former Sailor Boys destroyed a copy of their single in the middle of the ring just to prove how bad they had now become.




For the last 15 years or so the WWF/WWE have released countless theme song albums, but sadly only using major record label artists and professional musicians as singers. Last year I was pleasantly surprised when they released "WWE Originals". Finally, some singing wrestlers! Unfortunately the songs for the most part turned out to be just as bland and uninteresting as the current crop of wrestlers themselves. The one exception is "We Lie, We Cheat, We Steal" by the late Eddie Guerrero and Chavo Guerrero, which is actually quite funny and a welcome breath of fresh air. Also, I found this odd music video from The Rock which is quite entertaining. I'm not sure where it's from, but judging from his hair I suspect it might have something to do with that Get Shorty sequel he was in a while back.


A fairly recent trend seems to be wrestlers trying to cross over as legitimate mainstream musicians. Chris Jericho has released a number of records with his band Fozzy, but his songs don't fit the novelty music mold very well. I haven't heard current WWE star John Cena's album "You Can't See Me", nor do I particularly want to. While I suspect that it is a pretty terrible album, John Cena just seems too bland and dull to produce anything that could be considered so bad that it's good. Now, one wrestler on the other hand who has no trouble in that area is "Macho Man" Randy Savage. A couple of years ago Savage released his first rap album "Be A Man". I'll let iMockery tell you about it, but just be sure not to miss the title song, which even tops his own classic "Speaking from the Heart" in the hilarity department.



Anyway, this is just a small taste of all the great wrestling related tunes that have been released over the decades. There are still many more wrestling music videos out there, and hopefully they'll pop-up on the net sooner or later. There are also some WCW albums I have yet to hear any songs from. Anyone know if there are any good tracks on these bad boys? Update: Just found WCW Slam Jam here, but it's just bad theme songs sung by low rent bands.


*A footnote on the Honky Tonk Man. When he joined WCW briefly in the mid 90's he wasn't permitted to use is old WWF theme song, so instead he recorded the song "Honky Tonk Baby" which seems to borrow quite generously from his original song. Honky Tonk Man also had a pretty catchy song later in his WWF career called "Hunka Hunka Hunka Honky Love", which I sadly haven't been able to find yet.