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Earlier this week, PWInsider.com sat down with AEW's Music Producer and Guru Mikey Rukus to discuss the release of the company's latest musical endeavor AEW: Symphony Series II. Thanks to Billy Krotchsen for this transcript!
Mike Johnson: Hey everybody, it's Mike Johnson in the audio section of PWInsiderElite.com. It is Monday morning, December 5, 2022, which means we're just a couple of days away from AEW Dynamite, AEW Rampage but also this Saturday afternoon, Ring of Honor Final Battle 2022 on Pay Per View, Bleacher Report Live, Fite.tv, all those wonderful things. AEW for the last couple of years has cultivated a new wrestling league but also a new culture in wrestling and with that comes new and unique ways to promote and present and elicit emotional reactions out of the audience. One of the most important aspects of professional wrestling on television and live entertainment across the board when you love professional wrestling is the music, the theme songs, the music you hear in the background, things like that. I'm very happy to be sitting down with essentially the John Williams of All Elite Wrestling - Mikey Rukus, who over the last couple years has gone from doing local independent and MMA entrance themes in the greater Virginia area to doing tons of stuff for AEW, becoming basically their in house producer for all themes all original music. Mikey and AEW have just released AEW Symphony Series Two, it's available on all the streaming platforms to purchase. It is classical interpretations, unique interpretations and some of the AEW entrance themes that we've all heard every week - the Dynamite theme, the theme for Jungle Boy and Luchasaurus and so many others. So I thought it'd be fun to have Mikey come down and sit down with us for a little bit, talk about the new release, talk about music and wrestling and how basically, his two loves collided and allowed him to kind of have this position with AEW. So sir, literally the first time we're talking - happy Monday morning, how the heck are you?
Mikey Rukus: I'm doing well, thank you. That was an amazing introduction, first, let me say, it is a high honor to be compared to John Williams. I don't know if I can accept that because he is like, in the upper echelon, like I'm at that lower level where I'm trying to get there but I certainly appreciate the connection between the two.
Mike Johnson: John Williams wrote the soundtrack to all our lives. He's the greatest composer of our generation, like Star Wars, Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET - no one's ever going to top the man. So consider it a compliment.
Mikey Rukus: Absolutely. I appreciate that. It's a very active Monday morning, doing a bunch of administrative stuff this morning before I kick into music production. We've got the Ring of Honor Pay Per View Final Battle coming up this weekend. So once I get done with some of my office work, I'm jumping headstrong into that for the remainder of the week for sure.
Mike Johnson: So obviously, everyone knows you work as a composer, you create a lot of music for AEW, you've done stuff for other entities as well. I gotta ask you, obviously you're very passionate about pro wrestling. You don't become as good and as varied with the type of stuff that you cultivate and create for AEW unless you have a true passion for wrestling. So I'm curious for you, which was the chicken and the egg. Was it music first or was it wrestling first? What was the first passion?
Mikey Rukus: It was absolutely wrestling first. I want to say that my very first image of wrestling was probably in early 1980. I remember seeing Boogie Woogie Man Jimmy Valiant and my mom was a huge wrestling fan when I was a kid. My dad was into it too. My mom was even a bigger fan than my dad was. I remember early images of Jimmy Snuka diving off the top of the steel cage on to Don Muraco like 83 and it was very prominent at our house and it just stayed with me throughout the years. I discovered music around 89. My very first concert was the Metallica "And Justice For All" tour and saw them at the Richmond Coliseum. The cold open for them when Matt Sorum was playing drums for them before he joined Guns N' Roses. I actually met them that night, my very first show, I was completely spoiled. And thought that every rock concert was supposed to be as good as this one. But it actually, it changed my life in terms of wanting to write music. But yeah, wrestling was absolutely the genesis of all of it.
Mike Johnson: So at what point do the two worlds collide for you where you realize, there's a market here for my creativity and also potential for me to find a career? Like obviously you were chasing music and that was your passion. Where do you realize that the two can cascade sort of into each other and become one united front for Mikey Rukus?
Mikey Rukus: Well actually it was born out of the need of supplemental income right around 2010. I was looking at trying to...I was trying to bring in additional income and I was writing music but I was not very good at it. I was kind of okay at it. But I just kind of made the conscious decision that I was going to do music for money. And I was playing in a couple of cover bands in our local scene and making some money there but I really wanted to kind of build on the production side and at the time WWE was still very prominent and they were like the number one in that whole music scene. So I turned and looked at the mixed martial arts scene and just decided that I was going to start from scratch. I was going to hit up indy and amateur mixed martial arts fighters from a local scene, the regional scene, and it just kind of snowballed from there to different websites asking for music and podcasts asking for intro music. Within a year and a half of that taking place, in like mid-2010, I had my music being featured in the UFC. UFC 142 was the first time I had my music featured in a larger scale setting. And then it continued to snowball from there. I was always a big proponent of networking and virtually shaking hands, almost borderline spamming people at some point. So I learned what to do, what not to do. I learned how to approach people, how not to approach people, and all in the interest of survival.
Then in 2016, somewhere around there, I saw a shift in the independent wrestling scene. There was a huge boom. I saw a lot of the professional wrestlers actually taking their own brands into their own hands and using, utilizing social media to carry themselves from one territory to another, one promotion to another. And I just decided I was going to shift and transition over as the MMA thing kind of dried up a little bit and just completely start over again. I said if I could do this in mixed martial arts, I couldn't do this professional wrestling. Not even knowing that anything was going on with AEW, they weren't even a concept or anything like that. So between 2016 and late 2018 I created over 250 entrance themes for independent professional wrestlers in the US and the UK, in Germany and just kind of branched out that way, created a name again. And in early 2019, I saw the announcement of AEW, I just felt like it was my time. I felt like - this was it. And the entire time I was working as a retail manager for various big box and small box, retail stores and things like that. So I stayed full time and built that up on the side. And even when I joined AEW in May of 2019 I stayed in my retail setting just until like, maybe the beginning of August. Right before we went to TV and launched AEW Dynamite. So it was always something that I always tried to work for. I didn't know that the end was going to be AEW. It wasn't even a concept at the time but it was just...it was a building of networking and staying consistent and delivering and always trying to work to the next thing. And that's how you create your opportunity. A little bit of luck, a little bit of timing and a whole lot of consistency.
Mike Johnson: So how does the connection with AEW come about? Where's the moment where you realize, all right, this is a possibility here, I want to make this happen. larger than life possibilities here, new company forming. Tony Khan, Jaguars, all this stuff. How do you make sure that you're able to ingratiate yourself and find your path at AEW? What's that process like?
Mikey Rukus: Yeah, so it's, it's pretty, it's pretty interesting how the whole thing came about because first of all, I had no connections with anyone in the company like I had no previous friendships, no previous business engagements or anything like that. So nobody knew me coming in. And you know, when I initially saw a tweet go out from Dustin Rhodes talking about how proud he was of his brother. And I went and looked that up and saw what Cody was talking about the announcement of AEW and that's when I started to do the research. And I tried to go the route of networking just like that, you know, I always would, I couldn't really figure out a way to get in touch with anybody. And then just kind of out of the blue. It's almost like, you know, like, a secret person walks up and hands you a note and sticks it in your pocket like go five paces this way and go two miles this way and you're gonna find a secret door and you open it. It was literally like that. So someone gave me the number to QT Marshall. I texted him, we had a text exchange, he called me and then he set up a call and I had my next call was with Brandi Rhodes. My next call was with Chris Harrington and it literally started with an audition, an audition theme and that first theme was Nyla Rose's Beast song theme. I created that in 24 hours just to show them that I can perform, I can perform quickly, I can deliver consistently and then there was some a little bit of back and forth on okay, what are rates, how many can you do and things like that and I just kind of floated the idea like look, you're going to need music all the time. So how about I just work here forever. And I'm paraphrasing of course, but that's how it actually came to be and Chris Harrington called me up and said we'd like to bring you on the team and the rest is kind of history after that.
Mike Johnson: Obviously you spend a lot of time in the studio creating things and there's got to be a million ideas that you try out some work, some don't, some never make to full fruition. What's the most satisfying part of this job? Is it the studio and the creativity and figuring out the riddle of what works for these characters in these moments? Or is it getting to see and feel the reaction when the final product is played in the arena, and they add emphasis to entrances and to dramatic moments and to the ambiance of the show for the live audience and for people watching on TV? Like for you, what's your favorite part of the process? And what's the most satisfying part of that process?
Mikey Rukus: So, I would venture to say that this is going to be probably different from any other answer that any other musician would push out there. All of those things would sound like that they would be the most important part. I actually came up in retail setting, you know, I learned at a very early age, about building and sustaining and taking ownership over the work you do, creating a foundation, make something that's long lasting and that still stands after you leave. So for me it's building the foundation, all of those things kind of play into it. But the favorite, my favorite part is seeing the expansion and seeing what our AEW music impacts and who it touches and who it influences above just the immediate reaction within the arena which is great, above the stream numbers that we get which are great. I like to be able to take pride in taking ownership over building that foundation and watching it expand and reach outside of the wrestling bubble. So when I see when people are messaging me saying hey, the Capitals are playing 'All About The Boom" or Devils are playing FTR's music for the face off and and somebody's going into the penalty box and they're playing Samoa Joe's, these are things that are really happening. And these are things that I really enjoy seeing because it shows that we're building something that's not just going to just be shelved and an archive. These are things that kind of expand and touch other people and draw more eyes into the product. So that in a nutshell, all of those things that you had listed in the beginning are fantastic and I love all of those, but the overall expansion and just building a solid foundation of a fourth dimension for the AEW brand.
Mike Johnson: Obviously we're sitting here to talk about Symphony Series II. Let's talk about this. What is it about pro wrestling that lends itself to the uniqueness of having some of these classical interpretations for AEW themes that have already existed like The Boom for Adam Cole and Prehistoric Adventure for the Jurassic Express and things like that, like what is it about pro wrestling that allows that sort of remix and sort of unique takes on the music so that it is alluring to the audience?
Mikey Rukus: Right, so I've always loved pro wrestling music, right and you know, it's such a, it's such a unique, it's such a unique cog in the wheel of what the pro wrestling machine is. But like at our core, we're all storytellers. So it's always great to see things like our AEW control center, or our AEW Road to Dynamites, our Road to's or the Countdown Series, that gives us an ability to expand on what our limited timeframe is on TV itself, and just tell a little bit of a deeper story. Paint more of a picture to our audience and the AEW Symphonies, the remixes the things that I like to kind of put together really allow the same aspect, you can take something like Saturday Night Live and they have a skit or a sketch that runs for a couple of months and then they turn it into a film, that's essentially what we do with our storytelling as well. So if you take a 60 second loop, for a minute and 30 second loop and say, Okay, let's take a step back for a second and let's tell the story. What would go here, what instruments could tell the story here, you know, we know that Adam Cole is a huge, huge Halo fan, so I wanted to make sure that I had a little bit of sci fi interpretation within his song and I said to myself, Okay, everybody knows the main riff (does riff), but where do we go after that? What kind of story can we tell after that? That really kind of encompasses not just all about the boom, but that cinematic hybrid sound? To really just give more of a story for the fans and more you get more mileage out of the music is what I like to say. There's so many different options that you could do when you take a step away and say, Okay, I'm not confined to that 45 second to 60 second walk down the ramp, we can take a step back and and really just open this up and there's a million different ways that it can go so that creativity there is amazing, it's just like painting with, you know, a full palette of colors as opposed to like your Crayola 64 crayons or even the 12 pack when you're in grade school. So that's... I feel like in itself, we're storytellers. And in every aspect of professional wrestling, storytelling is always the basis.
Mike Johnson: When it comes to the presentation of the AEW themes in the music, what's your favorite live AEW musical moment thus far? Like I know which one sticks out to me. But I'd like to ask you what moments either are most memorable to you or you hold most in your heart, just because you're proud of them, are proud of the backstory, like the you know what, in terms of the music and in terms of live moments that have happened at AEW pay per views and TV broadcasts, which ones really stand out to you as the ones that are important to Mikey Rukus.
Mikey Rukus: Sure, so they're, they're always going to be I have a laundry list of them. But the ones that stand out the most by far number one for me would be Sting. I remember being a kid at the Richmond Coliseum and seeing Sting wrestle Ric Flair. And it was their their final, their final house show match prior to the first Class of Champions, seeing him as a kid and then being able to create that theme for him to debut in AEW, that is like the the top part for me and then of course, being a live performer and having the opportunity to perform the Lucha Brothers theme at All Out 2021. That was an amazing moment as well. Being able to collaborate with Alex and Sonny Kiss who did the choreography and the Lucha Brothers and even Jose had helped at that point to try to mitigate some of the translation. I mean, I'm Puerto Rican but I don't speak Spanish. I grew up in Virginia. So Jose was there to kind of help facilitate with that as well. Just an amazing moment overall. And I was actually in the building when, when Adam Cole debuted, you know, just seeing those moments for me are really special. And you always look to the next one and how can you create these moments? But what I've learned is you can't really force, you can't force those moments, those moments, kind of birth themselves out of the energy and there has to be the right talent. It has to be the right booking. It has to be the right moment. It has to be the right music and all of it kind of plays into each other and, you know, it's one of those moments that you just, you don't know how they're gonna go but when they do go, they hit you right in your soul and they stay there.
Mike Johnson: The Lucha Brothers performance is the one that I was gonna mention earlier. I loved that. Like I just feel like it exemplified everything about those personalities and those characters and just added this unique above and beyond just environment for that match. Like it just made it like that big like, we've all seen like the big match feel right? It's every UFC and boxing events and showdowns and movies and I just felt like it added that big fight feel to that moment and just brought it like to the next level and like I'm sure as a performer, that's all you could hope for with everything you do and that to me, that's the one where I felt like everybody just hit a grand slam with in all aspects of that entrance in that moment.
Mikey Rukus: Let me say let me say this real quick, too. It was like it was an idea that we were going to do it but it didn't really come to like this is going to happen until like the day before. We actually didn't rehearse it until the afternoon before the show. So and then, you know, Alex had some conflicts and scheduling conflicts. So he actually couldn't be there. He said I gotta go. I need you to kind of set this up and run this with the guy and I was like, I've never met them before. I don't speak Spanish. How's this gonna work and, you know, but it all kind of came together. You know, Alex laid it out. Sonny helps facilitate, Jose helped interpret. And we ran it a couple times. And like after the first, the first run through, I was like, This is gonna be special. And it's just a special moment. And, you know, I'm not saying we won't ever do it again. But you know, if the opportunity lends itself it'd be a great surprise.
Mike Johnson: So with the new record, how is it different from the first and what have you learned from the previous AEW musical releases that have kind of helped you improve upon or take a different path to what you wanted to do with the new release?
Mikey Rukus: Sure. So I always look at these extended releases, these EPs and albums, they're always learning experiences for me. I am, I've always said this before, I have ADHD. So it's hard for me to kind of just work on things just to kind of learn things or just kind of diddle around or practice, that's not really in my nature because I'll always end up in a rabbit hole doing something completely different than what I had originally set up to do. So I always set up goals. Always try to set up reasons for things to be done and have a finish line with them.
From the first Symphony album to this one, you know, there were a lot of different things that I learned in terms of presentation in terms of collaborations and where we want to take the music. It was amazing to be able to bring in Dale Oliver and Zane Oliver. Zane is an incredible young mind that works in our AEW post production team and has a huge love of orchestral arrangements and things like that so it was nice to be able to give him the platform to create, he actually worked on, he did Kenny's music in Series One he did Jade's music in Series Two and actually had Dale come in with him. It's just the learning curve and learning different techniques and it's no different than like an artist that just starts out sketching and then learns different techniques. Maybe there's stippling or shading or maybe the interpretation of the direction where shadows should be. It's the exact same thing with that but also understanding, having a deeper understanding of the storytelling from the talent themselves as well. So each one is always going to be a level up and it's a lot of it's going to be internalized and how we take things to the next level and like in terms of producing Series Two, I was already getting ideas for Series Three. So hopefully, we'll have three more of these series drop in 2023. I've already got a list of the theme, kind of in my mind as to what's going to be coming down the pike. But we always look to level up on every single one.
Mike Johnson: Obviously music in anything in entertainment is always a collaborative process. We've mentioned the Lucha Brothers but who are some of the favorite talents you've enjoyed collaborating with or you'd like to collaborate a little bit more with because they've got some musical inclinations of their own down the line?
Mikey Rukus: So I actually enjoy, I've worked, I enjoy working on all of them. I hope I'm not jinxing myself, but I've never really had an overtly difficult person to work with. It's just really about listening, listening to what they want. And then combining that with the story that the team wants to tell. So it's working with Tony, working with the particular talent and then kind of producing what they have in their mind. And the trick is, you know, you're working with people who aren't necessarily, not all of them are musically inclined. So they're, when they try to explain something to you, in non music terms, it's your job to decipher that and really try to present it. In terms of working with musically inclined talent, we've..there's actually been talks about some special things in 2023 with the Butcher, Andy Williams, and Frankie Kazarian and a couple of others. I won't give too much away, but we've had some discussions about doing some cool things and, you know, I'm adamant that I need to get Taz to do a Christmas album, but he doesn't want to do it.
Mike Johnson: You know what he could do? He could do a cover of Oscar the Grouch's "I Hate Christmas". There you go. I'm sure I'll get an angry text later.
Mikey Rukus: I've hit him up before, he's like "Noooo." I'm like dude, you've got to, he's like "Noooo."
Mike Johnson: I can see it now - Taz presents Christmas Jones the record, it would be tremendous.
Mikey Rukus: Absolutely.
Mike Johnson: You get to live a life where you get to create and perform and have others enjoy the fruits of your labor. What is your message to everybody who at some point in their life, they're in a position where they're just grinding through but they're not fulfilled as a person, they're just trying to pay the bills? What's your message to them? For those who do dream and hope of finding the level of fulfillment and creativity that you have because it's not easy, you know, it's not an easy process. But you know, if you're lucky and you work hard things do happen. What's your message for someone who's kind of in that grind right now and doesn't see the light at the end of the tunnel?
Mikey Rukus: Well, the first thing that I would say is don't give up. And I know that's a very cliche thing to say, don't give up. You have to be okay with the chance that you won't get there. And I know that's a really weird thing to say. But you have to like, sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. Even in my plight now, there's things that I'm working on outside of AEW, some things work and some things don't. Prior to AEW, I didn't know about AEW, I just knew that I was working towards something. But I had come to the conclusion like look, if this doesn't work out, like my world isn't over. You have to continue just grinding away in it. And I know grinding is a cliche term. And grinding can sometimes be an oppressive term when people think about the work that goes into it. But you do it because you love it first. You do it because maybe that's a little bit of supplemental income but same aspects. You have to love it in order to be able to, to study and get better and look for ways to always be better. I would say that never, never stop learning. Never stop researching. Never stop trying, never stop experimenting. These are the tools that you're given. That you develop over time to where you know, it may take you now it may take you know, two, three weeks to make a song but you know, five years down the road, 10 years down the road. If you're in a crunch you can knock one out in 45 minutes and then knock one out in two hours. You know, these are things that you have to kind of take with you. So it's always an ongoing process. I would always say that always look for an opportunity to learn, always look for an opportunity to look at what you created and what you could have done better and apply it on the next one. So I know that's kind of long winded. It just all kind of encompassed in that one thing that just keep moving forward.
Mike Johnson: You've had a chance to collaborate & work with a lot of unique artists over the years and sometimes some of the best performers when it comes to music or those who work in the studios or those who work on bands that might not be name level, you know draws on their own, but they are the ones who really make the magic happen. I got to ask, if you have your druthers, as I sound like Charles Dickens, you have your druthers, like who is the dream collaboration for yourself, whether it's someone in wrestling or someone in the music world, like what's the dream collaboration, if Tony Khan says guessing who you're going to be working with, we have an idea and we want you to work with this person - who's that person?
Mikey Rukus: I have a few. I would love to work with Tom Holkenborg, Junkie XL, most notably for his score for the Mad Max Fury Road and he just recently scored Sonic Two. I love his orchestral and film, film interpretation, film score interpretation that he puts out. I had a chance to meet with some of his management team last year and they said that he very much took the same road that I did. He was a club DJ, very well known Club DJ, just kind of transitioned into film. He built it up on the side and transition fully and does all of his own stuff, matches all of his own music. I would love to be able to work with him on AEW music in the future. Corey Taylor is another one, not just for AEW, music but even, you know I'm actually in the throes of planning a second solo album, probably in 2023. I would love to work with him on something like that. And most notably AEW music, so those are my two. Dave Grohl would be another one. So those are my big influences in terms of songwriting. I would love to work with all three or one of the three, draw a number, draw a hat, pick three cups with the name underneath, whoever - I would love it.
Mike Johnson: Alright, well we just put it out in the universe. I hope it happens for all three. You popped me with Junkie XL because he did the score for Godzilla vs Kong for director Adam Wingard and I love, like it's such a fun, funky wackadoodle movie, and I love the score for that film. Like he just nails every scene perfectly. Even like the big monster fight scenes, like all of it, I was like this is like, you know when you listen to a movie or you listen to a record or you go somewhere and the music just fits perfectly and that's a great example of the music and the score fitting perfectly for that type of film. So you pop me with Junkie XL, I gotta tell you.
Mikey Rukus: Let me give a quick shout out too as well on Symphony Series Two to the Dark Order symphony, Hisham Dahud does a piano accompaniment, he's actually part of Junkie XL's team. He made himself available to create a very soulful piece, I actually got that back from him and I'm not even gonna lie, I cried for a good five minutes when I first heard it by itself before I even put it in context. And it was to remember, it was the tribute to Brodie Lee with the Dark Order Symphony, so pretty amazing piece from Hisham and part of that whole Junkie XL squad.
Mike Johnson: That was actually, it's gonna be my next question. The tribute to Brodie Lee, I wanted to ask you what it was like working on that piece and what it means to you to be part of furthering the legacy and continuing the celebration of his life.
Mikey Rukus: First of all, it's an incredibly high honor. So when people experience loss, they act in a certain way, they process it a certain way. Even from an early age, I had always turned to music not just to talk to myself, but to speak to others who were mourning or hurting or wanting to celebrate and remember somebody. My first foray into that...I was in high school. My senior year of high school we had two very good friends of our group that were killed in a car accident right after school, they actually collided with a school bus. They lost their lives and the entire school was... it was a rough time. And all I knew to do was to play music. And we had actually had an assembly where it was like a Christmas assembly and you know, the bands were doing like the musical pieces and they gave me the floor to actually play. So I played a piece and it was... I want to say it was Thunder March from Marty Friedman. But it was a very stripped down version of that song and that was just kind of like a dedication for them and just feeling the way I felt after I played it. That's something that I've always turned to because it's kind of how I process my grief. I work from home, my home office so I don't get to see the team a lot. The initial tribute that I wrote was sort of the same way, it was like, it was a spin off of the Exalted One theme, and this time around when we told the story of the Dark Order like how do you not put that in there but at the same time, you know, we're a year and a half removed, going on two years removed from the passing of Brodie Lee. And we look back and we smile. We look back and you know it still hurts that he's not here but you can take that and say listen, the impact that he made on the people that he was around, and I had only met him a couple of times, but the impact that he made on the people that knew him. It's very important to immortalize that and really just and let people know like Hey, he is a staple within the lives of so many. So and I wanted to go above and beyond this time as opposed to just having a musical piece. So I got with my orchestration editor Laura Moore, and she rounded up the Cantata Academy Chorale in Detroit, Michigan and we had a 40 piece chamber choir actually record the finale for the end of that song. So very moving, very intense. It meant a lot to be able to get that out and just put something on the chapter in the story arc, the Dark Order.
Mike Johnson: Well, everybody can check out that song as well as everything else that is part of this incredible, unique interpretation of AEW entrance themes as part of AEW Symphony Series Two. All of AEW's music created by Mikey Rukus can be found, first on Twitter, you can go follow @AEWMusic and you can listen to Series One, Series Two and a ton of entrance music. Basically every major streaming platform you can think of Spotify, YouTube Bandcamp, Apple Music, for all I know maybe even MySpace, who knows. But you can check it all out. Mikey, I can't thank you enough for sitting down and talking to us. I hope we get you to come back at some point because I'd love to just chop it up with you about like classic wrestling themes. Like you know, you mentioned Dale Oliver. There's a million things we can talk about that he worked on over the years. Bad Street USA is one of my favorite songs in the world. I could sit there and talk about that song forever and that music video that Michael Hayes did in the 80s forever. Maybe we'll do that at some point. But last question, and it's always the hardest question. Why should fans listening to this or checking out this interview go out of their way to stream and purchase AEW Symphony Series Two?
Mikey Rukus: So first of all, let me say I would be more than happy to come back and chop it up with you on classic themes. I love wrestling music as a whole. So but yeah, for sure. So Symphony Series Two. It's just such an amazing accomplishment to be able to do something different within the realm of wrestling music. So, you know, aside from just storytelling, I want wrestling fans to be proud of their music. So even though we all love wrestling music even as kids, you know, there have been times where I would pull up at a light and somebody's listening to a wrestling theme and they've got a blasting but when somebody pulls up, they immediately turn it down because they don't want people to kind of look at it because they're listening to wrestling music. I want to be able to create music that not only tells stories but reaches outside of the bubble and allows wrestling fans to be proud of the music that they're listening to. That's why we have you know, we ended up in the top of so many Spotify wraps this year, and things like that. Those things are important to me, to make sure that not only are we telling those stories, and not only that people are enjoying it, but we want them to be proud of the music that they support. So definitely check out Series Two AEW Symphony to listen to the different interpretations of your favorite AEW themes. And always feel free to drop a suggestion for me as sort of what you'd like to hear in the future because I'm always listening. I'm always looking. I'm always trying to figure out different ways to be innovative and stay ahead of the curve and just create more content for our fans to consume and really draw a deeper connection to AEW.
Mike Johnson: Everybody can check out all those AEW themes including Symphony Series Two on all the places I just mentioned and you can also follow our guest at this time, the Grand Poobah of all things AEW music @MikeyRukus. And we thank all of you for your support. AEW airs this Wednesday and every Wednesday on TBS, every Friday AEW Rampage and of course, this Saturday afternoon the 2022 edition of Final Battle which will be the first Final Battle produced under the auspices of New Ring of Honor owner Tony Khan. It's going to be a very interesting journey for everybody as we check out Chris Jericho against Claudio Castagnoli and all the other matches that are scheduled for this Saturday afternoon in Texas which will feature a ton of music created and composed by our guest Mikey Rukus and sir, again, thank you so much for the time and I look forward when we get chance to sit down talk some music again.
Mikey Rukus: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it.
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