The Story Behind WWE's The Wrestling Album

In 1985, WWF has already conquered the realms of television, merchandising and arena shows. The organization looked for a new world to explore and found its way into the music industry with the release of "The Wrestling Album," in which the WWE roster offered up their terpsichorean skills.

The creative force behind "The Wrestling Album" was singer/songwriter/producer Dave Wolff, who at the time was the manager and boyfriend of Cyndi Lauper. Wolff united his long-held passions for music and wrestling with the 1983 breakthrough music video for "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" by casting "Captain" Lou Albano as Lauper's beleaguered father. But Lauper's label, Epic Records, realized wrestling could widen Lauper's appeal.

"We realized that Lauper was bringing in a mostly female audience, and we needed to get more of the young male demographic buying her record," Lennie Petze, the executive producer of Lauper's "She's So Unusual" and "The Wrestling Album," recalled in a 2015 interview with Vice. "The storyline that developed of Lauper owing Captain Lou record royalties and each of them managing a wrestler, Wendi Richter and the Fabulous Moolah, was huge. Lauper was a star, but I honestly believe the WWF guys helped her go to a whole other level."

In the same Vice interview, Wolff took credit for conceiving of "The Wrestling Album" – he floated the idea by Albano and Roddy Piper to gauge their interest in the project, then secured Vince McMahon's approval and brought Epic Records on board. And while Wolff acknowledged he'd be making a novelty album, he insisted that "novelty can't be done right if it isn't treated with respect. If the idea is better than the execution, then you have nothing. I couldn't do things haphazardly. I was committed down to the last detail. Silliness requires serious thought beforehand to flourish."

The resulting album consisted of 10 tracks. Some were off-beat covers of popular tunes — "Mean" Gene Okerlund performed Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti," Nikolai Volkoff served up "Cara Mia" — and others were original songs penned for the album, perhaps most notably Jimmy Hart's "Eat Your Heart Out, Rick Springfield."

Wolff received the rights to rewrite the lyrics of the Wilson Pickett classic "Land of a Thousand Dances" with wrestling-related references. That number was the focus of the only music video released in conjunction with "The Wrestling Album," and it featured the WWF roster divided on a stage — babyfaces on the left, heels on the right — with various WWF talents taking a line or two and singing in tight camera close-ups. The video ended with a brawl between the two sides that was capped with "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndoff crowning Bobby Heenan with a drum.

"The Wrestling Album" spawned three singles: "Land of a Thousand Dances" and two original songs, "Grab Them Cakes" performed by Junkyard Dog and "Don't Go Messin' with a Country Boy" performed by Hillbilly Jim. None of the singles made it into the Top 100 and "The Wrestling Album" peaked at #84. The music video for "Land of a Thousand Dances" received airplay on MTV while Junkyard Dog performed "Grab Them Cakes" on Dick Clark's "American Bandstand."

Although not a rousing success, McMahon was impressed enough with WWF's musical detour to form a music label that put more wrestlers into the recording studio. More albums were produced over the years, with the most recent WWE Music Group release, "Uncaged XV," coming in 2021. 

For executive producer Lennie Petz, "The Wrestling Album" gave him a modicum of immortality. "Over the last few years, I've been interviewed for a number of retrospectives," he told Vice. "No matter what the topic, they inevitably ask, 'You were involved in 'The Wrestling Album'?' That, and the Don Johnson record "Heartbeat." Nobody ever asks about Jeff Beck."