Jon Moxley debuted the hit song “Wild Thing” as his entrance theme, during his AEW Dynamite match against Yuji Nagata.
The Japanese legend crossed the Forbidden Door to face off against Jon Moxley on the May 12th, 2021 episode of the show, battling in one of Dynamite’s legendary matches.
Moxley ran out the winner in the match, but it was his entrance that wowed the crowd. He ditched his usual music for the hit song by “The Troggs“, entering to “Wild Thing” as the crowd exploded.
Jon Moxley entered to “Wild Thing”, the 1965 hit by “The Troggs”. While this may have seemed like a random pick for his entrance music, it was actually a tribute to a death match legend that inspired Moxley.
Jon Moxley has revealed that using Wild Thing as his entrance music as a tribute to Japanese legend Atsushi Onita. Onita was the brain behind the ultra-violent FMW promotion, which innovated matches like the Exploding Barbed Wire Death Match.
Onita himself used to enter to Wild Thing, and Moxley paid tribute to him by entering to that song.
Speaking on the Cincy 3:60 podcast, Jon Moxley explained that Wild Thing was chosen as his entrance music, due to comparisons between himself and Onita.
He revealed that Tony Khan tried to get the music for his match against Kenny Omega at AEW Revolution, but could not secure the rights until months later, against Yuji Nagata.
“So we’re doing this Exploding Barbed Wire match And I was being compared to the innovator of that, who’s called Atsushi Onita, who’s a Japanese wrestler who came out to that song.
A month before Tony was like, we’re talking about it and Tony goes ‘should we get Wild Thing for that?’ Just for one night for the Exploding Match.
And I was like ‘no that’s too derivative. No it’s too much.’ And then a week before I started thinking about it again and I was like ‘well it might be cool for one night.
People might get the reference. Just for that one night I was like ‘let’s do it.’ By then, it was too late and we couldn’t get the rights for it or whatever.”
Jon Moxley continued to use Wild Thing as his entrance music, but not The Troggs version of the song.
Instead, he took even more inspiration from Onita, and used the version sung by the band X, released in 1984.