Zack Call from Downstait reveals the origin of the "woah" in Cody Rhodes' theme song.
Since Cody Rhodes returned to WWE at WrestleMania 38 in 2022, he has established himself as one of the company's top stars. While he rose to new heights after he left the company in 2016, Rhodes used the "Kingdom" theme by Downstait during his journey elsewhere, and he kept it upon his return. Since then, the song has become quite popular among fans, as audience members increasingly sing the "woah" in the song with each passing week.
Speaking with Tom Campbell on Cultaholic Wrestling's Desert Island Graps, Downstait lead singer Zack Call discussed writing "Kingdom" and revealed that he didn't come up with the fan-favorite "woah." He then detailed its origin.
"Cody was going through his trials in WWE with the Stardust thing. The ‘Dashing’ thing and the mask thing was such a cool character, he was having great matches every night. I was invested in Cody. He was a top-three guy, if not too guy, depending on the evening for me personally. I knew his story. When we got into writing [the song] after he said, ‘Yeah, give it a shot,’ I was like, I know the story. I know this guy’s character up and down, and let me see if he doesn’t kind of I jab WWE a little bit. The one part that I didn’t write in that song that will haunt me til the day I die is the big ‘woah’, which we did it on purpose to go back to all the Smoke and Mirrors stuff. He always had a ‘woah’ in his song. I’m nailing WWE as I’m writing, and I’m just stealing his dad’s promo for the pre-chorus. Then Sean just, box-wine-drunk, I’d like, ‘Hey, let’s hit a ‘woah’ there for the crowd to sing.’ That’s a really good idea, man. I had no clue that anybody would ever start singing it, and now it’s the biggest thing in wrestling entrances ever," Call said.
When asked if the ‘woah’ was sarcastic, Call noted that it kind of was. He explained that they were trying to put Easter eggs in the song, and the "woah" was an example. Call noted that he had no idea it would become so popular,r but its place in the song was intentional.
“A little bit. So Marvel fans and WWE fans, wrestling fans in general, love Easter eggs, so we were just trying to sprinkle as many we could into it. I was like, ‘This might be too cheesy’ because we were right on the head with everything we were writing, and that ‘woah’, I was like, I think it’s perfect there for what I’m talking about. As soon as you go out of Gorilla [Position], the crowd’s like ‘woah’, they see you. That’s literally all that I was thinking when he had written it, not thinking there was gonna be any kind of sing-along with it. Now, it’s nuts. But that was definitely on purpose. Sean had something in mind when he had sung it that way," Call said.
Cody Rhodes is set to face Brock Lesnar at WWE Night of Champions. More information is available here.
Matt Cardona, who also has a Downstait theme song, recently discussed his interest in facing Cody Rhodes. Click here to see what he had to say.
Check out Rhodes' comments about the WWE World Heavyweight Championship here.
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