Six of the Best – New Japan Pro Wrestling Entrance Themes

Hello You!

I’ve got some free time and I’ve wanted to do this one for a while, mainly because I love entrance music. Sometimes the best thing about an entire wrestlers act can be the entrance music they use, and when a promotion gets the music right for someone it can be utterly fantastic.

I decided to start out with New Japan because I often like having New Japan themes on in the background when I’m doing some work, just because for the most part they are catchy tunes that are fun to listen to. It was tough deciding which wrestlers to include and who not to in all honesty. For example, a guy like Tenryu worked New Japan countless times and has great entrance music, but he also worked All Japan, SWS, WAR, NOAH and others during his career, so really his music didn’t strike me as New Japan’s to claim.

Ultimately I decided to go with guys who I associate in my mind as being “New Japan guys”. In lots of cases these wrestlers will have worked in other places over their long and esteemed careers, but important periods of that career will have been spent doing battle inside a New Japan ring, using the particular music listed as their entrance theme. Indeed, on this list will be people who left New Japan and, with the exception of one, I think all of them ended up changing their music when they left anyway.

As always, these are just my own personal picks. This isn’t supposed to be some sort of objective list or anything. If I leave out a track that you think warrants inclusion, then please feel free to put it down in the comments section below.

So without further to do, let’s take a look at Six of the Best New Japan entrance themes!

Jushin Thunder Liger – “Ikari No Jushin”

This one is somewhat of a cheat as it’s actually the theme of the Japanese anime that the Liger wrestling character was based on, so it’s not really entrance music that New Japan created themselves. However, I felt it would be remiss of me not to include possibly the catchiest entrance music in the history of professional music. I think most of us have been caught at least once humming this after watching a Liger match. Certainly the exciting style Liger displayed in the ring played a big part in me becoming a fan of Japanese wrestling in the first (Like a lot of people, the Super J Cups were my gateway drug when it came to the world of Puro) but his awesome entrance music was a big reason for me falling in love with his act also. Even now many years later I’ll still sing along to it sometimes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRkkjqa8kaU

Keiji Mutoh – “Hold Out”

This was the theme (Along with remixes of it) that Mutoh used for the majority of the 90’s before switching to “Trans Magic” when he decided to go bald and start Shining Wizarding everyone to heck and back. To me this theme always makes me think of New Japan’s big Fukuoka Dome Show in 1995, a show in which Mutoh (Sporting an awesome beard) took on Shinya Hashimoto for the IWGP Title. A friend of mine who had rarely ever watched Japanese wrestling decided to watch it with me because he’d never really seen any of the classic stuff before. Following Mutoh’s entrance in the huge Dome with “Hold Out” blaring over the sound system, he turned to me and said “That might possibly be the greatest entrance I’ve ever seen on a wrestling show”. The screeching guitar solo is possibly the best part of the song, but overall it’s just an imminently high tempo and exciting theme that went hand in hand with Mutoh’s wrestling style and personality during this period of his career. Trans Magic is a decent theme, but Hold Out will always be THE Keiji Mutoh entrance music for me.

Yuji Nagata – “Mission Blow (He’s A Pirate Intro)”

Yeah I never really got the whole Pirates of the Caribbean intro thing either to be honest, but it made an already awesome entrance theme even cooler so I’m not complaining. Yuji Nagata is possibly one of my favourite New Japan wrestlers of all-time and his entrance music is just one of the many cool things about him. What I love about this song is how it continues to evolve and build throughout its run time, taking you down avenues you perhaps might not expect before bringing you back to the always excellent chorus. One of my personal favourite moments from going to a wrestling show live was seeing Yuji Nagata wrestle at the Altrincham Ice Rink in 2018, complete with this music. It was even better in person after all the years of watching it on television.

Shiro Koshinaka – “Samurai”

Annoyingly it’s hard to find a clean version of this on YouTube, with only the version posted atop (Which is ruined by arena effects) and then this, admittedly very impressive, cover. Why this theme is so hard to track down is beyond me, but that’s the case with a few New Japan themes from the 90’s Era, including Kensuke Sasaki’s “Power” theme, of which finding an original non-remixed version is like finding the proverbial nail in the haystack sometimes. I’m not sure how many others would include this on their list, but I always enjoyed Koshinaka’s act and I thought the entrance music played a big part in making it so enjoyable. That and the fact he used to hit people in the face with his bum (Oh sure, he’d say it was his “hip”, but COME ON, it was clearly his arse he was hitting them with and it was never anything but great!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raO0U1npcJc

Riki Choshu – “Power Fall/Hall” (I’ve seen it called both)

Choshu of course used this theme in All Japan as well when he jumped ship from New Japan over to Baba’s company in the 80’s, but he did eventually return with his entrance music still intact. It’s just a shame that you can only find a less than a minute long version of it on YouTube. It’s a theme that’s been remixed and redone so many times that finding the version I like best has become a struggle. This is a shame because Choshu’s music just keeps getting better the longer it goes on, with a fantastic almost creepy ghostly like sound effect playing over it as it reaches the latter stages. Choshu is a guy whose work I haven’t always been the biggest fan of (I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it either), but his music is genuinely one of the best entrance themes ever in my opinion.

Prince Devitt – “Real Rock N Rolla”

This is not just a great theme in its own right but it also represented the change in attitude of Prince Devitt perfectly, as he went from babyface Junior Heavyweight coming out to the Karate Kid theme to becoming the leader of a heel faction and changing his personality to that of an evil jerk. If you’ve never really seen Devitt’s New Japan work and have only seen him as Finn Balor in WWE then I heartily recommend checking out some of the stuff he did during this period of his career, as he was not only great in the ring from a wrestling perspective but also from a character one outside of it as well.

The honourable mentions list could go one forever, so why not just add what entrance themes you like the most in the comments below? With only six to pick from I’m sure I’ve missed out lots of themes that other people think should have been included, so why not share with us your favorites? Trust me, there’s plenty of others I would have liked to include.