When it comes to music in professional wrestling, entrance themes typically receive the most attention. Theme songs for promotions and their TV programs, however, can play a crucial role in fostering an identity for a company and its style.

Sometimes, wrestling promotions use licensed music to great effect, like WWE featuring Marilyn Manson's "The Beautiful People" for Raw and SmackDown across the years. AEW bafflingly used The Pointer Sisters' "I'm So Excited" to kick off Dynamite in 2025, though they quickly shifted back before once again changing to a new track by Sum 41 later in the year.

An original composition, however, can make a more distinct impression that creates a long-lasting connection with fans. While many are more likely to recall the main riff of Raw Is War's "We're All Together Now," or ECW's "This Is Extreme," the origins of one iconic wrestling TV intro have long eluded us: the Combat Zone Wrestling theme song.

Fake You TV

Growing up, I was fortunate to live in an area that carried the local access channel WGTW 48, which ran CZW's Fake You TV — a name that is good, and also makes sense — every Saturday night.

Though my friends and I were also voraciously downloading CZW clips on KaZaA at the time, it's tough to communicate what a gift it was, as 14-year-olds in the early 2000s, to have weekly Combat Zone Wrestling on our televisions.

Fake You TV opened with the iconic theme song and always set the stage for a chaotic hour of local cable access television, introducing us to independent workers like "Sick" Nick Mondo, Nick Gage, Justice Pain (RIP), and of course, John Zandig. 

Nobody Does This to Zandig

Photo credit: Mike Mastrandrea

I initially assumed it was CZW Owner and former Heavyweight Champion John Zandig lending his vocals to his company’s anthem. The MIDI drums give it away as a home recording, and part of me wants to believe Big John was nailing takes on a Tascam four-track Portastudio back in 2000. Though he'd be perfectly capable of shouting the "C! Z! W!" portions of the song, I'm not sure he'd have the melodic chops for the rest of the song. 

It appears I was not alone in this assumption:

It's tough to know whether BikiniDeathSquad assumed it was Zandig singing or if he loved to purposefully spread misinformation on the Internet, but it does slightly pain me to think that shizokiller has gone about their daily life for the past six years thinking it was Big John's pipes on the recording.

Someone close to the inner workings of early CZW tells me that he was "always told that it was just some random man from North Jersey that sang" on the track. I'd like to think that John Zandig is more than just some random man from North Jersey, especially because he's from South Jersey.

Once Again

In 2014, CZW began using a re-recorded version of the track, attributed to Combat Zone wrestler Dan O'Hare and Jason Goldberg. Though it's a perfectly acceptable reimagining, complete with actual drums, it lacks a certain DIY quality that elevates the original.

Others have also attempted to capture the brilliance of the first recording, including former AEW, WWE, and CZW World Champion Jon Moxley, who somehow failed to remember the iconic lyrics.

Jon continued to sing the song at other events, seemingly regressing from his previous knowledge of the lyrics with each performance.

Even stranger, on an early-2000s outdoor show, Big Japan Pro Wrestling played a separate CZW theme song entirely, never to be heard again:

Maybe a local Japanese band recorded tracks for the BJW/CZW feud at the time. I'd like to think there's a doppelganger of myself hunting down the origins of that recording in Japan. Is he, too, laying the law, once again? Is he preparing for war? The mind reels.

To Live Is To Die

These other recordings brought me no closer to figuring out who wrote and recorded the original track. Fortunately, many commenters and uploaders are plagued by the same mystery:

Beltmaker09, jcjcoleman13, I wish I had more information to share with you on the matter. So, I began to dig deeper. More than 12 years ago, a user named Alisha Joana uploaded the original theme song once again and included a distress beacon in the description:

This Theme is Cool . If Someone knows the Band ,I would appreciate if You can mention it in the Comments . Thank You :)

Still doubtful, I scrolled down to see:

Now we have a name attached to the song. The commenter says that it seems like it is Dan Nelson (?), though it is not confirmed. In another CZW music video, I encounter the same name:

Connecting the name and CZW, it appears that there are multiple instances on the Old Internet of people referring to the CZW theme song as "Violent Outbreak," credited to Dan Nelson. Still, who knows the origin of these claims? A game of telephone could have caused the song to receive this title and credit on a whim in the first place, repeated into the void by various users online for decades.

You've Been Denied

Dan Nelson briefly fronted the band Anthrax from 2007 to 2009. If you're a thrash metal fan, his entry and acrimonious exit from the band may be common knowledge, but I record wistful indie rock, making me a coward who gets scared when people start yelling in their songs. 

Dan doesn't appear on any studio recordings with the band, but he shares co-writing credits on their 2011 album Worship Music, and there are clips of him performing with Anthrax.

Strangely, I don't hear him mentioning bones that are breakin' or anything about layin' the law in these Anthrax songs, but the voice is definitely similar. Perhaps more importantly, Wikipedia cites him as having recorded a self-titled album with a band called "Powerbomb" in 1998. It's a tenuous connection to wrestling, but it's still a connection.

Dan's social media pages lie dormant or resolve to dead links in some cases. His YouTube page hasn't been updated since November 2018, when he performed "Forget" at the East Elmhurst, NY-based Good Eats Bistro. It appears he occasionally plays out with his band, Dan Nelson and the Contention, after this point.

I fill out every possible email form and send DMs attached to anything related to Dan; people whose recordings he has produced, or who shared a bill with him on a show. I join Discord channels like The Thrash Den, where complete strangers scour the Internet to try and pin down details for me. I post on Reddit and X. They all turn up dead ends.

So, I figure that Dan is the most likely to have written and recorded the track. Maybe it's called "Violent Outbreak," or maybe someone on a message board randomly gave it that title 25 years ago, and it just stuck. I finish writing this piece and plan to publish it with an open end, now slightly more confident about the song's creation. The journey has been satisfying, I guess.

Are You Ready?

I receive an email.

Hi Matt, this is Kim. Dan Nelson's wife.

I saw the email you sent about the CZW theme song "Violent Outbreak". Dan did indeed write, sing & perform all the instruments for that song. He recorded the song in his old apartment studio.

How it all came about, was that Dan's manager at that time also managed a few of the wrestlers in the CZW stable. Dan's then manager introduced Dan to Zandig. Zandig asked Dan if he could write a theme song for the promotion…and the song was born shortly thereafter.

I truly resigned myself to never knowing who recorded the CZW theme song, and the answer appears, plain as day, in my inbox. It feels like I am receiving Forbidden Information — people have wondered about the origin of this song for about 25 years, and it seems we now have the answer.

Dan Nelson, former Anthrax vocalist, wrote and recorded "Violent Outbreak" in his apartment. I'm unsure who Kim refers to as Dan’s manager in the email, and my research turns up no answers. It could have been Big Mac Smack (RIP), "Discount" Dewey Donovan, or Justin Kase, for all we know. We do know, however, that they were a crucial part of recording one of the greatest wrestling-related songs of all time, and we are forever indebted to them. I don’t want to prepare for war, though.

Matt Whittle is a freelance editor and writer who has covered subjects such as education, healthcare, and wine. He also records music under the name Seagulls.