Legendary Entrance Theme Composer Jim Johnston May Have Been Released By WWE

It’s impossible to quantify just how important music is to professional wrestling. From entrance music to segment bumpers to weekly show and pay-per-view themes, the music of pro wrestling, and more specifically, WWE, evokes so many indescribable feelings. A good theme can make a career, much like a bad theme can ruin one, and for the better part of the last 30 years, Jim Johnston has been responsible for most of the soundtrack of WWE.

Johnston, formerly titled as WWE’s Director of Music, wrote themes for the likes The Undertaker, The Rock, Randy Orton, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Chris Jericho, Brock Lesnar, Vince McMahon, Kane, Bret Hart, and Goldust over the course of the last 30 years, and that really just scratches the surface of Johnston’s contributions.

Over the last several years, Johnston has taken a bit of a backseat to CFO$, the songwriting duo of John Paul Alicastro and Michael Conrad Lauri. To CFO$’s credit, they picked up right where Johnston left off, creating some incredible themes of their own for wrestlers like A.J. Styles, Shinsuke Nakamura, and Bobby Roode.

CFO$’s emergence was probably writing on the wall for Johnston’s eventual departure, and as of now, it appears as though that is the case. Twitter user ThemeTitan_, who seems to have some strong affiliation or relationship with Johnston, reported on November 30th that Johnston was released by WWE. While WWE or Johnston has neither confirmed or denied the report, there hasn’t been any pushback on the news, which is circulating everywhere at this point.

Johnston’s departure is sad news for the simple fact that so many fans’ interest in WWE is rooted in tradition and nostalgia, and Johnston’s contributions throughout the years had a huge hand in that fandom. You have to give Johnston some serious credit for surviving in WWE as long as he has, too, because career longevity is not something a lot of people behind-the-scenes in WWE would describe as a given.

Over the last couple of years, WWE released a few episodes for their webseries “Behind The Theme,” where Johnston talked about the creative process behind making some of WWE’s most iconic themes. I’m going to drop a few episodes below, starting with Johnston’s fantastic rendition of The Undertaker’s theme, played using only a piano. It’s pretty fantastic, which is how you could describe most of Johnston’s work.