Music in professional wrestling

In practice, modern day entrance themes are normally heavy metal, rock, rap, or contemporary R&B, as these genres of music are popular with the professional wrestling key demographics.

Examples of this include CM Punk having used "Cult of Personality" by Living Colour, or the Luchador La Parka performing a dancing entrance in a skeleton suit to Michael Jackson's "Thriller."

Due to licensing costs, entrance themes are often composed by the professional wrestling promotion for which the wrestlers perform in order to avoid having to pay royalties.

In addition, Extreme Championship Wrestling used popular commercial music (albeit without paying the proper royalties) for their various wrestlers in order to promote a hip, edgy, counter-culture image.

In the early 1950s, female champion Mildred Burke often entered to theme music, while Gorgeous George was associated with "Pomp and Circumstance Marches", a song which was later used regularly by Randy Savage.

[3] However, the practice did not become widespread until the 1980s, when the Fabulous Freebirds, Hulk Hogan, the Junkyard Dog, and various World Class Championship Wrestling performers began using rock music for entrance themes.

The most common use of music in professional wrestling is to play while a wrestler, tag team, or stable makes an appearance be it in the ring, on stage, or on the screen. An example seen here with Hulk Hogan making his entrance on a WWE Raw show.
Gorgeous George was one of the few wrestlers in his time to have music accompany his entrances.