5 of the best and worst music-related wrestling gimmicks
Music is an essential part of professional wrestling and has been for at least the past couple of decades. The first few notes of a wrestler's entrance theme alone can send crowds into a frenzy. Wrestlers themselves and their themes become entwined over the course of their career. After all, nobody hears “Real American” and thinks, “Oh, hey, this is that Rick Derringer song.” Well, except for maybe Rick Derringer.
But, while many successful wrestlers have incorporated elements of music and music culture into their characters, some performers have decided to portray themselves as real musicians. The concept in of itself isn’t that unusual - after all, if there can be wrestling dentists, cops, and sanitation workers, why not musicians? With most not-a-wrestler wrestling gimmicks, though, they're hit-or-miss, and they miss more often than they hit.
Just recently, my Facebook feed has been full of people posting the concerts they’ve seen in the past; it gave me the idea to go back and think of some of the worst - and slightly less worse - music based gimmicks in history. These are the gimmicks where the wrestler either performed music themselves (or pretended to, anyway) or - in one particular instance - were associated with someone else who did. We are not, however, including musicians (such as Insane Clown).
So, are you ready to rock?
#5 “Best”: 3 Count - boy band - WCW
Hear me out here.
3 Count was a WCW “boy band” tag team featuring Shane Helms, Shannon Moore, and Evan Karagais. In the late 1990s, boy bands and pop music were huge, and as wrestling promotions are usually wont to do, WCW attempted to capitalise on it. However, in a pretty clever twist, 3 Count was purposefully terrible at music - singing insipid lyrics off key and poorly trying synchronised dance moves. They were the personification of what most wrestling fans at the time thought of that style of music.
Of course, like most things, WCW had to go and screw it up, but it was pretty impressive conceptually.