Ethan Page isn’t just tired of fans singing wrestlers’ entrance themes—he thinks it’s one of the biggest problems in wrestling today.
Speaking with Chris Van Vliet, Page ripped into what he called the industry’s obsession with crowd participation, arguing that too many wrestlers have become dependent on catchy chants instead of letting their characters do the talking. In fact, Page was so fed up with fans hijacking his own entrance that he scrapped a theme song he actually loved just to make it stop.
“I think everybody’s lame right now. All wrestlers right now are corny and lame. I don’t want to be corny and lame, and I don’t want to cater to this pop-pro wrestling garbage that’s happening right now. I don’t need people to sing along. I don’t need people to chant. I just want to have a nice catchy tune that I can walk to the ring to.”
For Page, it isn’t just about the music—it’s about who controls the presentation. He believes entrances are supposed to introduce the character, not turn into a singalong where the audience becomes the main attraction.
“I mean, good. Yeah, screw them, dude. It sucked. Everyone just wants to take everything and make it their own. Like, guys, this is professional wrestling. This is not some sing-song, happy time. The way wrestling is now, music starts and everyone thinks they have the right to play along like it’s for them or something.”
Ironically, Page said he never wanted to replace his original NXT theme. He enjoyed it. What changed was the crowd. At first, fans chanted “E-go” during his entrance. Eventually, that evolved into thousands of people yelling “ass****” every time he walked through the curtain—a reaction that completely drowned out the television broadcast.
“Every wrestler has some catchy tune everyone sings. So I come out and everyone was going ‘E-go’ right away, and then they turned it into ‘ass****,’ which… you’re killing my entrance. Especially on CW Network where NXT’s airing the whole time. People are supposed to be talking about me, the commentators, legendary Booker T—nobody’s hearing what he’s saying because the crowd is doing what they want.”
According to Page, the chants became so overwhelming that entire entrances were practically unusable on television. Instead of embracing the reaction like many wrestlers would, Page decided to erase it altogether. He changed his entrance music because he wanted the focus back on his character—not on what the crowd was chanting.
“I’ve had full entrances where you can’t hear anything. You just kind of see me smiling and walking and pointing, and then once I get in the ring, the chant stops and just boo. Then you hear the tail end of whatever the commentator is saying. I wanted to take that away. To me, it was too involved. Don’t involve yourself in my stuff. And I don’t want to be like everybody else.”
He also revealed that the version fans originally latched onto was already the product of months of work with WWE producer Coach Bloom. Even after going through seven different versions of the song, Page felt he had no choice but to start over once the audience made it something he no longer wanted.
“I went through seven iterations… and then once people took that from me, I was like, ‘Okay, we’ll take it, change it again—number eight.'”
So instead of embracing one of the loudest crowd reactions in NXT, Page did the opposite. He ditched the theme entirely, making today’s entrance music the eighth version after deciding the original no longer fit the presentation he wanted.
Do you agree with Ethan Page’s take on modern wrestling, or do fan chants make entrances more memorable? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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