WrestleMania week is here, and while I might’ve fallen out of the loop on what’s going on in the WWE in recent years, I can’t help but get excited about their version of the Super Bowl. It’s a time-honored tradition in the spring time, and has become one of the greatest entertainment spectacles in the world. I’ll be counting down my favorite WrestleMania matches and events in the coming days, but I wanted to take a stab at something new. We all know that one of the unheralded marks of a good WrestleMania is its theme song – so, I mulled it over and came up with a list of my 10 favorite WrestleMania theme songs to commemorate this weekend’s big event. LFG.
My Top 10 WrestleMania Theme Songs
10. Kid Rock – “Celebrate” (WrestleMania XXX) – This song fucking sucks, and I hate that it plays so well as a wrestling theme song, but it does, so consider this me acknowledging that. Every time I hear this song, I think of that iconic WrestleMania in New Orleans and the YES Movement.
9. The Flo Rida year – “Good Feeling” and “Wild Ones” (WrestleMania XXVIII) – Again, I hate that I love this so much, but if you’re going to run a match as big as John Cena vs. The Rock, you have to set the tone by having a mega star attached to the branding, and they weren’t much bigger than Flo Rida at the time.
8. Saliva – “Ladies and Gentlemen” (WrestleMania 23) – I mean, it feels like this song was written…literally…for WrestleMania. I don’t know what else I can say about this one, but they surely got their mileage out of it.
7. Kevin Rudolf – “I Made It” (WrestleMania XXVI) – To this day, I feel like WrestleMania XXVI is criminally underrated in the grand scheme of WrestleManias, and it even had a catchy theme song that made for a fun little highlight video to boot.
6. AC/DC – “Shoot to Thrill” (WrestleMania 25) – AC/DC kind of feels like a copout because I’m pretty sure at some point in time every single AC/DC song was used as a pay-per-view theme. Nonetheless, “Shoot to Thrill” played perfectly as the hype song for the biggest event of the year. Something about those big arena anthems just feels like a natural fit with WrestleMania.
5. Peter Gabriel – “Big Time” (WrestleMania 22) – I still think WrestleMania 22 is the greatest WrestleMania of all time. So, that’s immediately what I think of when I hear “Big Time.” I know at the time, nu-metal was all the rage, and had dominated WWE promos for nearly a decade. So, this did feel like a shift in philosophy, but I actually loved the way it worked. That highlight video at the end of the night used to be one of my favorite parts of WrestleMania, and it always seemed to make the night feel bigger when it was cued up at the show’s end. “Big Time” was the perfect soundtrack for that year’s show.
4. The Weeknd – “Blinding Lights” (WrestleMania 36) – You want to talk about a song that was made to play in a stadium of 70K+, “Blinding Lights” is that song. It’s a shame this was the covid year, and they just played it in an empty Performance Center. Seems like I remember they might’ve played it some at last year’s ‘Mania, but I can’t recall for sure. This song is an ear worm, and it was EVERYWHERE in 2020.
3. Rev Theory – “Light It Up” (WrestleMania 24) – This might not be a popular ranking, but man, this was the perfect promo song. No one had heard of Rev Theory before this, and I don’t know if we’ve even heard of them since then. But, like some of the other songs on this list, it felt like it was written specifically for pro wrestling – it’s big, catchy, and riff-y, which also makes it perfect fodder for promos. I still get this one stuck in my brain from time to time. One of the best pro wrestling songs ever.
2. Pitbull – “Greenlight” (WrestleMania 33) – Hate all you want, I’ll still die on the “Greenlight” hill. It was catchy as hell, having Pitbull on board with that year’s ‘Mania from Orlando was PERFECT branding. I don’t know how else to describe this song other than it feels like pure springtime and pure sunshine. I think happy thoughts when I hear “Greenlight.”
1. Limp Bizkit – “My Way” (WrestleMania X-7) – 21 years later, and when I think ‘WrestleMania theme song,’ I still think about “My Way.” Limp Bizkit was huge at the time, but that particular song felt like it was written for the squared circle. I still think that promo for The Rock vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin is the greatest main event promo of all time. There was so much good stuff during that program – from the sit-down interview with Jim Ross in the locker room, each guy doing the other’s finisher, the drama with Debra, etc.. It was everything you’d want in a main event, and that one damn Limp Bizkit song cued it up perfectly. The WWE hasn’t topped this one since.
WrestleMania 38 takes place over the course of two nights beginning this Saturday night and Sunday night.
Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley
Check out the SoBros Shop. Become a Patron. Give us money for no reason. Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter @SoBrosNetwork. Watch on YouTube.
