10 WWE Stars Who Gambled On A New Entrance Theme

"You either adapt, or you perish."

Those were the words of Triple H, foreshadowing the 2015 heel turn of Seth Rollins, and he was likely experiencing harrowing flashbacks to his days as Hunter Hearst Helmsley when uttering them. He had to adapt, because that gimmick was the sh*ts, and his 'Blue Blood' theme was the poisoned foodstuff that forced it out of him.

It was meant to sound snooty, majestic, superior, but it instead sounded almost quaint and twee. This wasn't the soundtrack of blue blood lording over the plebs; it's what plays in the mind of fedora-tipping incels as they attempt to white knight a m'lady on social media. The Jimmy Hart Version of Rage Against The Machine helped redefine his act as a bratty, lewd jock jackass, but he struggled once more upon his next heel singles run: 'Corporate Player', for all of a month, saw Triple H walk to the ring backed by a boring, swaggering riff in an era when the impotent crunch-rage of nu-metal reigned supreme.

Eventually, Trips landed on a series of iconic, banging entrance themes by using the power gained through who he was banging...

These experimentations tend to happen when an act feels stale, or if the first experimentation is sh*t.

There is a long litany of Mandela Effect one-month specials in WWE, but this was decidedly different: in the first of just two character tweaks in about a decade - the second of which saw John Cena magically turn into a super-worker for a few glorious months in 2015 - the impending Ace of the company switched up his instantly iconic theme just before he was set to assume the role.

It was a strangely-timed and audacious gambit - Basic Thuganomics was a great, obviously bespoke theme that, with its violin-led sting, mirrored Cena's incredible ability to play the crowd like a fiddle - but it paid off.

'My Time Is Now' was on-the-nose, but perfectly so. The sting sounded daunting, to his opposition and turned-off hardcore fans alike, both of which converged to enhance Cena's super-dominant aura. The mariachi trumpet was such an unusual, out-of-character choice, but the music-of-the-streets flavour enhanced his persona as a new man of the people.

Half of those people hated him, of course, but he made the theme, and not the other 'way round.