The Revolving Door of "Glorious Domination"

Who exactly is glorious? Bobby Roode made his NXT debut a little over a year ago, showing up in the crowd at “Takeover: Dallas”. Since then, Roode has taken NXT by storm, winning the NXT Championship and defeating Shinsuke Nakamura at back to back Takeovers. What you might not know is that Roode and Nakamura share another connection.

According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter by way of Wrestlinginc.com, Nakamura was originally intended to have Roode’s “Glorious Domination” theme. This lines up with a previous interview with ESPN where Nakamura talked about being sent a theme song and turning it down.

“Before my debut, WWE sent me a sample of the music and I sent it back. I said, ‘I don’t want to use this, I don’t want to use this.’ They tried to keep it and I said, ‘No, no, no.’ Finally, I asked them if they could listen to some samples, and we went back and forth and finally they sent me what you hear now, and I said, ‘Yes, OK. I’ll use this one.'”

This lines up with an interview Roode gave to RVMag back in October where he said “Glorious Domination” was offered to someone else first, though he didn’t say who.

“I had a song that was picked out that was different than the ‘Glorious Domination’ that everyone is familiar with now,” Roode said. “Triple H came to me and said the song I chose originally really didn’t fit the character that he saw. We talked in great lengths about how I wanted to portray myself as a character.

“I wanted to bring back the robes and wanted to kind of go back to the character I portrayed before. The ‘Glorious Domination’ song was created for someone else and it just happened to be there, not being used, and I got to listen to it. It was obviously very different from the song I chose originally, but Triple H was a fan of it, I was a fan of it, Michael Hayes was a fan of it, a lot of people were fans of the song. I thought, ‘Hey, why not? Let’s give it a whirl.’”

Opinion: This is a case where the whole thing worked out for everyone. Both of them have great songs that the fans love to sing (Is it singing in Nakamura’s case?) during their entrances. I’m not sure I can imagine Nakamura coming out to Roode’s theme music as it just fits Roode better.