I’ve got a unique problem that I’d like to unpack today. It’s not like something that’s weighing on me or anything, I just find it a little interesting. Sting is, of course, one of the most legendary wrestlers of all time. To me, he was the definitive babyface of WCW for basically the entire time it was called WCW. He is the biggest name TNA ever got, and when he finally set foot in WWE, I swear to you, time stood still. It was incredible.
And yet, even though I’ll never forget the day he came out to the ring at Survivor Series 2014 for as long as I live… I cannot for the life of me remember what music was playing. I can’t recall his WWE theme at all. I’ve tried a couple of times to go back and listen to it, and yet even as I type this, I genuinely have no concept of how it goes beyond a few sound effects at the intro. The song itself, is lost to me. The last time I heard it I even said “Yeah I’m gonna forget this again tomorrow” and I totally did.
There exists a scale of what you can visualize in your head and I consider myself fairly high on it.
That video doesn’t really go into audio that much but I figure it works on about the same principle. I can generally imagine sounds about as well as I can with images, so if I have a song memorized I can sorta play it in my head, for minutes at a time if I focus enough. But any time I try to think of Sting’s WWE theme, there’s just… nothing there. And I’ll be linking to it later in this article but I’d rather wait because I’d like for you to try it yourself. Do you remember how Sting’s WWE theme goes…?
I mean granted, it only played a handful of times because Sting only really made a handful of appearances. He had like three WWE matches and two feuds to build to them. Still, some of those appearances were huge deals that got replayed a bunch. Making his mark on WWE at Survivor Series, stepping onto the stage at WrestleMania for the first time… immortal stuff. Immortal stuff with that song in the background. So why doesn’t it stick?
I realize you just have to take my word for it on this, but there are a lot of really obscure themes I remember with ease.
Downstait did a crummy version of Dolph Ziggler’s theme that existed for maybe like two weeks before being replaced by a better variation and I still remember it pretty vividly. Granted that’s got a lot in common with what came directly before and after it but like, really? I remembered atleast a little bit of Daniel Bryan’s Two Steps From Hell theme, but not Sting’s one WWE theme?
There is absolutely, positively no reason that the weirdly edgy theme that Curtis Axel and Bo Dallas used for two months should have made more of an impression on me than Sting’s, but it definitely worked out that way.
And no, it’s not just a WWE thing either.
That this also applies to the TNA theme is actually weirder to me. He was in TNA for basically the entire period that I was consistently watching. He may have only made a handful of WWE appearances but he was a TNA regular for sure. And – MEM run aside – the entire time that I was following the show he came out to a song called “Slay Me” and… yeah, I’m drawing a bit of a blank on it too.
I’ve seen maybe four of Jessika Havok’s matches but I remember that dubstep she was using back when that was in vogue clear as crystal. I can remember most of the lyrics to Winter’s Hands of the Wicked theme. The Stone Cold Shark Boy remix, Black Reign, all of it jumps to mind swiftly. Somehow, Sting isn’t on the list for that either.
I can sorta remember elements of Sting’s TNA theme but I can’t exactly put it together in my head if that makes sense. It’s a little better than the WWE theme in that regard but considering how many more times I must’ve heard it, it should be permanently imprinted but it just isn’t.
Listening to it now, I mean it’s fine, it works. But it also kinda feels like it could’ve been given to a lot of people. I don’t think anything about it makes it specifically Sting’s.
Maybe there’s only room in my mind for one Sting theme.
I was tempted to make a gag out of this, do a little build up of how iconic his WCW music was and then cut to A Man Called Sting. And yeah, it does also slap in it’s own cheesy way and I do remember it just fine which is why my wording in the headline is as specific as it is.
But nah, I can’t even pretend. I can’t disrespect Crow.
It was just so perfect for that era of sting. If not for how hard they beat you over the head with the nWo theme I think it’d be the most iconic in WCW’s history. Both dark and heroic, 90s edginess mixed with classic iconicism, it suited him in a way that it would suit no one else.
And it suited him in a way that nothing else does. None of the other themes ever really tried to duplicate it, presumably because they know they can’t. TNA ripped off other music like nobodies’ business back in the day, which is why they did a knockoff of Seek And Destroy for him first but that’s a topic for another day. And yet they knew better than to make a pale imitation of his most iconic theme. The cinematic version of which is the only unironically good thing about Ready To Rumble. The song was made to be in a damn movie.
It’s honestly a little blasphemous to think that WWE has the rights to use his most famous theme and they just didn’t. They just had to re-brand him in their image and that meant a new theme was mandatory.