If you were a professional fighter, what would be your entrance song?
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| Not a big music guy Text by Cosmo Lee |
If you were a professional fighter, what would be your entrance song?
I’ve been watching a lot of UFC lately. Normally I focus on the actual fights, but recently I’ve been noticing fighters’ entrance music more. Almost invariably, it’s super-lame. Professional athletes are not known for good taste in music. You don’t see them trolling Internet forums to discuss the latest Archgoat split. They’ve got better things to do. “I honestly am not a big music guy,” Dan Henderson said in this USA Today story. “I’m not out there to listen to music. I’m out there to beat somebody up.”
Helpfully, mmafighting.com has compiled lists of entrance songs for UFC events. I’ve done the Google search here. (If links are outdated, click on the “Cached” option.) The lists are good for a laugh. There is a lot of horrible moose rock and nu-metal. The usual clichés (“Eye of the Tiger,” “Welcome to the Jungle”) abound. In UFC 69, Kurt Pellegrino walked out to MC Hammer’s “Too Legit to Quit.” If I had been his opponent, I would have laughed my ass off. In UFC 89, Terry Etim walked out to Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.” I don’t get it. Just thinking of that song drains my testosterone.
A few fighters have decent entrance songs. Andrei Arlovski probably has the best one: Icepick’s “Onward to Victory.” It has everything one could want in an entrance song: snarling dogs, air raid sirens, and Jamey Jasta yelling the title a lot. Rich Franklin walks out to AC/DC’s “For Those About to Rock.” You can’t go wrong with AC/DC. In UFC 87, Dan Evensen walked out to Manowar’s “Gods of War.” That’s an appropriate use of Manowar. But if he truly wanted to scare his opponent (and probably 98% of the crowd as well) with a martial intro-ed metal song, he should have used Behemoth’s “Demigod.”
My first choice for an entrance song would be Judas Priest’s “Painkiller.” My second choice would be Slayer’s “Raining Blood.” Both songs are instant testosterone surges for me. They make me want to lift heavy objects and crush my enemies and do extra-large loads of laundry. However, knowing me, I’d run the risk of headbanging and throwing goats/invisible oranges so hard that I’d never make it to the octagon. Sigh. Maybe there is a point to wussy entrance songs: to fill one with so much rage that one can’t help but go and whoop ass.
