While at WrestleMania 39, Johnny Christ heard the song for the first time in years.
From 2005-2009, Ken Anderson was a member of WWE’s talent roster under the name Mr. Kennedy. Throughout his time in the company, he captured the United States Championship and won Money in the Bank in 2007.
There was a point during Anderson’s run when he was going to have a theme song created by Avenged Sevenfold. That was confirmed by the band’s bassist, Johnny Christ. He guest appeared on The Jesea Lee Show. The song was never released.
Johnny and Avenged Sevenfold’s lead vocalist, M. Shadows, were at WrestleMania 39 with their families and they caught up with Jonathan Hammer. Hammer is WWE’s Senior Director of Music, Marketing & Catalog and he remembered the song they made for Anderson. Hammer still had the song and they all listened to it over a phone.
Christ went on to share that Warner Music and WWE could not reach an agreement. He’d love to release the song present day if legalities would allow for that to happen.
Yes, that is absolutely true (that Avenged Sevenfold recorded a theme song for Ken Anderson & it was never used). Back in, I’d wanna say 2007-ish, 2006-ish, Ken Kennedy was one of the things over there, and evidently, he was a fan, had reached out or someone there was a fan. Don’t quote me. This is 20 years ago almost now of how exactly it came to us but, we recorded and wrote an original piece for him to come out to. It definitely had the ‘Ken! Kennedy!’ in it and everything and it’s funny, because last year, I went to WrestleMania when it was here at SoFi (Stadium) and ran into Jon Hammer who works with the music department of WWE and he’s a fan — me and (M.) Shadows were there together with our kids and he came over to our suite… and he remembered that. He’s like, ‘You know what? I think I still have it’ and me and Matt, we’re like, ‘Oh my God! I haven’t heard it in years.’ None of us could find it anymore, where it was and we listened back to it on his phone like ear to ear… But yeah, no, that rumor’s absolutely true. I wish we could find the originals of it. Unfortunately, it was a thing between Warner Music and WWE couldn’t come to an agreement on the contract or the rights to the song at the time. For whatever reason. The people who were there at the time aren’t even working for Warner anymore and probably not many of them in WWE are working there anymore that had those negotiations but, unfortunately, it never came through. I don’t know what the legality is of us being able to ever show that song or anything like that at this point, but, yeah, it’s true. We went in, recorded it. I think we were in the middle of a tour and we went into a studio and recorded that and yeah, I was really bummed it didn’t come out too because it was a good tune. It was a good intro tune. I mean, I don’t know if it was an album song but definitely for a one-off and to be part of Ken Kennedy’s entrance, that would’ve been really cool.
I wanna hear it again. Not just off the phone again. I wanna hear what we did. I remember parts of it now because it was coming back to me last year when I heard it on the phone but, yeah, I wanna hear it as a whole as well and I would love to be able to release it again. I’d have to follow up with management and everything and see if we can locate it, number one, and number two, what the legalities of releasing it might be.
Anderson is active in the ring and was most recently in action on May 4th for a promotion in Michigan. Back in 2019, Anderson worked dates for the National Wrestling Alliance and was part of their Powerrr program.
If the quote(s) in this article is used, please credit The Jesea Lee Show with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
