Go to any message board, Reddit thread or Twitter/X thread on the best entrance themes of all time and you’ll see Spartan X. It’s synonymous with the King’s Road, 90s All Japan and a period that influenced almost everything that has come since. That period gave us some of the best wrestling matches of all time, but it also gave us a bunch of banging entrance themes. Spartan X (alongside Grand Sword and Holy War) sit in that tippy top tier. 

Let’s fire it on and set the mood, there’s no crowd in this video, but I bet you can hear Misawa! Misawa! in your head:

Spartan X, certified banger. The theme was composed by Keith (sometimes known as Kirth) Morrison. Morrison was an alias of Japanese Composer Toshiyuki Kimori that he used on certain movie soundtracks. Kimori, born in Hokkaido in 1948, both composed and assisted on a number of famous anime, including the likes of 1983’s GOLOGO 13 where he is credited for music arrangement. Kimori evencomposed the soundtrack for the 1986 animated Super Mario movie – Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach. So now we can link Super Mario into the wider Misawaverse.

Under his Keith/Kirth Morrison moniker (can we say gimmick?), Kimori composed the soundtracks to some Hong Kong action cinema classics, including the legendary Jackie Chan movie Wheels on Meals. In Japan, Wheels on Meals  was and is known as Spartan X, and Spartan X has a different soundtrack to that of the international release of the movie. 

So how did we end up with two different soundtracks for Wheels on Meals? There’s actually multiple versions of the Wheels on Meals soundtrack and audio mix – in Cantonese, Mandarin and two in English. The latest Blu Ray release of the film features both soundtracks. One of those versions, produced by Hong Kong cinema production powerhouse Golden Harvest, is by Kirth Morrison. After release, the producers felt a different direction was needed for the international version of the movie. Thus a second, funkier in tone, soundtrack was created and deprived us in the West of Spartan X:

Kimori passed away in 1988, only a couple of years after Wheels on Meals was released. Sadly, he never got to see his theme ring out in front of a passionate AJPW or NOAH crowd, nor would he know the impact his composition would have as the soundtrack to so many legendary moments. To finish, here’s a Misawa entrance with a twist, his last in the Tokyo Dome and his only Wrestle Kingdom entrance from 2009.