Former WCCW TV Director Details How The Freebirds Innovated Wrestling Entrance Music

While Tony Khan has brought back using real songs as entrance music and show opening tunes during the first four years of AEW's existence, it's easy to forget that hit songs were often used to play wrestlers to the ring during the territory days. The Junkyard Dog came out to Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust," while the Fabulous Freebirds' Michael P.S. Hayes, Terry Gordy, Buddy Roberts, and Jimmy Garvin used, what else, "Freebird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Oddly enough, though, the use of original music in wrestling would also begin with the Freebirds, and their entrance theme, "Badstreet USA," saw Hayes provide the vocals. In an appearance on "The Insiders" podcast, television director Dan Bynum, who served as the director for World Class Championship Wrestling in Texas, where the Freebirds first made their name, detailed how "Badstreet USA" came about, en route to changing wrestling music forever.

"Here we are, we've got the hottest show on television, and we are using music as entrance music, which is something we were kind of at the forefront of as well," Bynum said. "So we used rock music, new "Tom Sawyer" for Terry and etc, etc. But there was a guy in Texas who was taking pictures of wrestling, but in reality, he was a composer and a music producer. His name was Jimmy Poppa. And he became friends with Michael Hayes and gave him the idea of a custom entrance song. And so he and Michael wrote the song, 'Badstreet USA.' And Jimmy produced it, and we started playing it as their entrance music. And it got over huge. It was a big hit."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "The Insiders" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription