B.J. LISKO 4 months ago

Downstait Teases New Theme For Ex-WWE Star

Original Photo Credit: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRb-WqF_TEE

Longtime WWE fixture Dolph Ziggler appeared at Thursday’s Wrestle Kingdom 18 alongside his brother Ryan Nemeth prior to the IWGP Tag Team & Strong Openweight Tag Team title match. Later on, he would also get into a confrontation with David Finlay after Finlay had become the inaugural IWGP Global Champion.

Indiana rockers Downstait previously penned entrance music for Ziggler as well as Cody Rhodes, The Miz, Alex Riley, Chelsea Green, Britt Baker, Matt Cardona and Dustin Rhodes, among others.

In response to Ziggler appearing at Wrestle Kingdom, the band took to Twitter to drop a hint that they’re behind the new entrance music for the former WWE star. The band shared a video of Ziggler’s “Wanted Man” short film posted by Ryan Nemeth on YouTube with the caption “coming soon.”

Downstait is credited with providing music for the clip, also titled “Wanted Man.” A brief section of the song plays towards the end of the video.

Downstait singer Daren Zachary Call previously told Chris Van Vliet about pitching “Kingdom” to Rhodes. The band’s most widely-known song topped 20 million streams last year on Spotify.

“Cody put out a tweet saying what entrance music should I use on the indies and he said something about ‘Throne’ by Bring Me The Horizon,” Call said. “I was wearing that album out at the time. I knew one by being such a big fan of his since he showed up with Bob Holly, I knew this dude’s character. I’m a wrestling historian, I know what he wants to sing about and I know what he’s going through a little bit just because dirt sheets are sometimes right, but at the same time, this dude should be getting a better opportunity.”

“So, we sent him a tweet through whomever we’d already worked for and said ‘Hey man, can we give this song a shot?’, and we sent him a snippet of what we were thinking about and I sent him…’Hard Times Breed Better Men’ is just straight copped from his dad’s promo, so I was like ‘Without being patronized in this situation and being a dummy, how can I just sell this character a little bit to the guy that’s doing it.’”

“So Sean and I sat down and went on a little bit of a wine binger and sent something back to him within like four hours and he highlighted the lyrics that everybody is singing now. We went back and recorded it, sent it back to him, he took it to Wrestle Kingdom, Battleground, Slammiversary, he took it everywhere with him. It was incredible and it gave us enough confidence [that] the old dog can still play with the young dogs. We did that and he started taking it everywhere with him and the song was catching on.”

Ziggler, real name Nick Nemeth, signed with WWE in 2004, and except for OVW, their developmental territory at the time, he has never wrestled elsewhere.