Wrestling's 6 Most Ill-Advised Music Careers

Pro wrestlers are, by their nature, an ambitious bunch. Not content to thrill grapple fans worldwide with their in-ring contributions, they often emigrate to other areas of entertainment too.

We've had wrestlers in movies, wrestlers on reality shows, wrestlers in MMA, wrestlers opening yoga studios...yes, these folks have had a go at everything. I've even been reliably informed that former COO Triple H is considering a career in workplace motivational speaking! (Various human resources studies have found that loudly proclaiming a broomstick could do a better job than most of your current workforce will almost certainly up morale and ensure better results.) 

For some reason, though, folks of the wrestling business seem to gravitate more to the music business than any other industry.

Maybe it's the performance aspect. Or the chance to express yourself and flourish creatively. Or possibly it's the fact that you can drink copious amount of booze, take a lot of drugs, and violently trash hotel rooms and actually be celebrated for it. Who knows where the appeal lies?

And the results are, almost always, utterly abysmal. Seriously—some of these guys are so bad it would be a miracle if they got past the first stage of American Idol. We know, for many, a career in music is their childhood dream, but doesn't it have to be everyone's else nightmare?!

A waste of time, money and resources, here are some of the very worst attempts at "music" (and I used that term loosely) by wrestlers who really should have stuck to their day job...

Maria Kanellis

There's an interesting story behind the 2010 debut album of former WWE star Maria Kanellis, Sevin Sins. Kanellis would reveal to wrestling website AngryMarks.com that the songs on the record were directly inspired by her real-life relationship--and split--from WWE main event star CM Punk: "I thought he was my soulmate, he thought otherwise. The entire album started with the inspiration of being broken up with."

Albums about heartache are nothing new in music. No Doubt's 1996 release "Tragic Kingdom" and Amy Winehouse's groundbreaking "Back to Black" were both influenced mainly by the troubled relationships and heartbreak of their emotionally-torn singers-- and both records are widely regarded by fans and critics as two of the best albums ever made.   

Well, sadly, Mr Brooks may be a talented wrestler, a great talker and a generally charismatic personality, but when it comes to being a muse, he downright sucks. In fact, he should probably come out and publicly apologize for being the main reason this album was unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

Because this album is bad. Like, unbelievably bad. On "Fantasy", the leading song off the record (although I suspect the producers just wanted to get the worst out of the way first) a shrill-sounding Maria comes off as the worst Amy Lee tribute act ever and shows absolutely no musical talent as a singer or songwriter whatsoever. A cheaply made video doesn't help matters. There's also the matter of the cringe worthy song "Change Your Mind" in which she begs her indifferent lover to "change your mind between my thighs." Er...too much information, honey. 

The album is so utterly atrocious, you're left wishing desperately that the Playboy cover girl had just been like every other woman in the world and turned to eating big tubs of ice cream and watching weepy movies with her friends when she got dumped. 

Brooke Hogan

Okay, Miss Hogan is not technically a wrestler, but she makes the list due to the astonishing amount of money her dad, the legendary Hulk Hogan, spent on trying to make her a singing sensation. Hulk would admit in a 2006 interview that he had splashed about $2 million to $3 million of his money on trying to get his daughter's pop career off the ground. Some sources indicated the figure was actually closer to a whopping $5 million (couldn't she have just gotten a real job instead?). Regardless of the true figure, Hulk was sure it as investment that would pay off.

But, hey, it was all worth it to help establish Brooke a singing career, right? Except there was one minor problem in Hogan's business plan.

Brooke couldn't actually sing.

Indeed, despite her good looks, years of dancing and singing classes, as well as some of the best producers and vocal coaches money could buy, Brooke was still, at best, a mediocre talent and her musical career clearly was never going anywhere (she was dropped from her four year contract SoBe Entertainment in 2007 after her album The Redemption was released to scathing reviews and flopped massively). In mind of Hulk's current financial problems, we bet he regrets pouring cash into this disaster.

Mickie James

"I drive a chevrolet pick up truck!" Mickie James obnoxiously proclaims as she opens the song "Are You With Me" from her country music album "Strangers and Angels." And, regrettably, things don't get much better from that point.

As this ridiculously cliched song continues, Mickie informs us that she likes to "kick it out in the sticks" and that she "makes a living with her hands to earn my pay." In addition to all this, she often finds herself "flying down a dirt road" when she is out partying on a Saturday night. She's a country girl, you see. And has to point this out to us many, many times, in case we forget and think she's some snooty chick from the city. In spite of going down a laundry list of country music traditions and cliches, Mickie does not, however, mention NASCAR (the song's sole saving grace).

Mickie would later reveal to interview Brian Fritz that the album had personally cost her an astounding $70,000. Unsurprisingly, as she prepares to record her second album, she is asking for fan donations to pay for it this time. (I'd like to think the US government would lend her a few bucks, too, as they will inevitably end up using the record to coax and torture information out of terrorists at some point in the future.)   

Mickie also sings her unfathomably awful theme "Hardcore Country" in TNA. A bottomless pit of misery and suffering, this song is so bad, I thought TNA Knockout Tara actually turned herself into a huge babyface when she crashed (her on-screen enemy) Mickie's performance of the tune on Impact last year and beat her senseless before she could finish tormenting the fans in attendance with it. 

Jeff Hardy

With his infamous drug problems, long drawn-out trials, jail stints and habit of showing up to events in "No Condition to Perform" enough times to make Keith Richards proud, TNA superstar Jeff Hardy would make a perfect rockstar. If only he could, you know, actually sing or play any instruments to a respectable standard.

Jeff's band, the oddly named Peroxwhy?gen, are famous for...well, being Jeff Hardy's band and being unbearably awful. Hardy's close friend and fellow TNA wrestler Shannon Moore is also involved, doing something only mildly resembling playing lead guitar.

The only notable thing this vanity side-project has done is (badly) perform Hardy's theme song in TNA, the dire "Another Me." Needless to say, it might be time for TNA to stop letting their musically-challanged stars sing their own themes. 

MVP

In his debut rap video "Holla To the World," it looks like former WWE superstar MVP has a pretty decent life for an unemployed guy: he lives in a giant mansion, wakes up in the morning next to stunningly gorgeous women he barely knows,  has a walk in closet the size of most people's bedrooms, rides around in an extremely expensive car, and parties by the pool every night with all his friends and a few hundred supermodels. Being future endeavoured has never looked so much fun! 

The music video also features a musician I've never heard of, Dwane Sweazie (just why do rap videos always have to feature another rapper, anyway? Can no one in this genre do anything for themselves?) and features cameos from wrestlers Carlito and Hernandez, who, in a rather terrifying moment, unsafely border tosses a female extra into the pool in a move that looks like it came perilously close to disaster. 

More ridiculous than downright bad, MVP still gets on this list for going to all that time and expense just to roll every single eye-rolling rap music cliche into one and remind of us how utterly amazing his life is. 

As far as his long-term prospects, well, let's just say: I doubt Kanye West or Puff Daddy will be losing sleep over MVP's emergence in the music industry.

Randy Savage

Released in 2003, wrestling legend Randy Savage's rap album, "Be a Man." sold an utterly pathetic 3,000 copies in his its first week of release and ended Savge's music career before it barely got started.

This was probably for the best, because the cheesy and badly made "Be a Man" was pretty awful. As one Amazon reviewer pleaded on the site, in an open letter to the wrestler, "Mr Savage, Why did you make this album? Why did you do this to us and to yourself? Do you realize that you have probably released one of the worst albums ever recorded to ANY medium?" Another unsatisfied customer raged: "After I listened to the Intro to this album I realized I was bleeding profusely from my eyes and ears." Ouch. 

Featuring 14 tracks of the wrestler venting on a wide array of issues that greatly irk him, the record's most famous track is undoubtedly that eponymous "Be a Man," which sees an enraged Savage absolutely tearing into real-life enemy Hulk Hogan and telling him to "Be a Man." Accusing Hulk of "running away" from a real fight, Savage rap, "I called him out but the punk was scared to go" and insists that Hulk is avoiding him because "he knows he'll get smoked."

Savage also trashes Hulk's movie career, while praising his own: "Hollywood don't make me laugh/ cause your movies and your acting skills are both crap/Straight to video the box office can't stand/ But I've got myself a feature role in SpiderMan." Well, he got him there.