10 Wrestlers You Didn’t Realise Were Vitally Important To Their Promotions
5. Jimmy Hart
Every time Bobby Lashley enters the ring, it sounds like he has new entrance music.
He doesn't.
It's just bland, indistinct and forgettable. It isn't rousing. It's not epic. It conveys a certain dominance. Tonally, it's not laughable. It isn't chug-chug-chug butt rock, and as such, there are two nice things one can say about it. The music of today's WWE is very much like today's WWE; punishingly bland, and anything remotely decent is looped to death. The art of crafting a theme has vanished, and beyond a promising but ultimately failed CFO$ run, it vanished with Jim Johnston - and Jimmy Hart.
Johnston, with good reason, is synonymous with the classic WWF compositions of yore. He created countless indelible themes and indeed memories, accentuating the complete package that was the WWF TV star to not at all inconsiderable effect. A bad theme can't ruin a wrestler, but an iconic one is as important as the finish.
Hart penned the Million Dollar Man's theme, Shawn Michaels' theme, Dusty Rhodes' theme: all of which were glorious earworms resplendent in character. Ted DiBiase entered the ring to the sharp sound of '80s excess; Shawn to a hair rock group seducing itself, not the teenage girl demo; Rhodes to a defiant, catchy as all hell boogie.
Themes that defined and even saved characters - watch those old WWF Dusty vignettes without the in-ring presentation, and you'll see the stark extent to which they got it so painfully literal - the 'Jimmy Hart Version' pejorative depicts him as a plagiarist, but he's been living in your head for three decades, where Lashley's theme doesn't for its duration.