World Champion Bryan Danielson discussed his reasons for choosing to start using Europe’s song “The Final Countdown” as his entrance music on the independent wrestling circuit during the 2024 AEW All In post-PPV media scrum.
Danielson said, “I chose it as a joke. I was going to Japan a lot and would pick up music magazines at the airport. They used to have all these lists of best songs or whatever. Well, they had the hundred worst songs of all time. I think number one was ‘Final Countdown.’ I was going through them and, I hate to say this, illegally downloading them on Napster. Like ‘Oh, I love this song! I haven’t heard this song in years!’ or whatever it is. ‘Final Countdown’ was—if it wasn’t number one, it was top 10. I was like, ‘Oh, this would be awesome entrance music.’
I do a lot of things to entertain myself. But I never once thought it would catch on in Ring of Honor. Let alone that 20 years later I would be doing it in front of 50-plus thousand people. So yeah, and with a whole 50,000 people singing along to ‘The Final Countdown.’ I don’t know if anybody’s shown this to Europe—if you could, maybe they might bring down the price. It might get us a couple more buys.”
AEW President Tony Khan also commented on the possibility of the song being used more often:
“Hopefully, they’ll give me a break, but yeah, we’ve locked in a great deal with Europe and are looking forward to more ‘Final Countdown’ plays. I hope, but that is yet to be seen. It’s been a very fortunate thing that they’ve been willing to work with us because, to Keith’s point and what Brian said, it’s added so much to the presentation. It’s one of the most iconic wrestling themes of all time and one of my favorite moments ever in the business.”
You can check out the complete media scrum below:
