Donovan Dijak worked with AEW’s Mikey Rukus on his “Capital Punishment” entrance theme, and he recently recalled collaborating with Rukus on it. Dijak appeared on Ropes N Riffs and talked about working with the AEW music producer on the song; you can see some highlights below (per Fightful):
On working with Rukus: “Super talented guy. I’ve been following him since before he was with AEW. I’ve always been a fan of him. Unfortunately for me, by the time I became aware of him and his work, I was already with WWE. So I couldn’t utilize it in any capacity. But then I saw, you know, I saw the formation of AEW and I saw that they picked him up and I said, that’s a great, great grab for them. Within days, if not hours of me finding out that I wasn’t, that my contract wasn’t going to be renewed with WWE. was within the first, probably 10 people who I told. That includes my wife and my children and my close, close friends, my parents. might’ve found out before my parents, honestly.
“As soon as I got any sort of inkling that I wasn’t going, that I might not be with WWE anymore, I immediately hit him up. I said, “Hey, I’m a huge fan of your work. I would love to collaborate with you and create something, and I’d love to be as hands on as I possibly can be.” He was super accommodating within probably 48 hours, I think he got to work. We went back and forth quite a bit in terms of, he sent me, I think three or four different samples and he said, he thinks this one is the best and it’s the one that we ended up going with. I said, absolutely sounds the best. Can we tweak this? Can we add this to the entrance? We do something here in the middle part at the 45-second part? He changed all of it.”
On being happy with the song: “I’ve never been happier with a song before than with ‘Capital Punishment.’ I think it’s fantastic. In my opinion, the best part about it so far is that nobody’s even seen it with a full, full presentation. I think the best that we’ve got so far is that MLW, which has this wonderful screen, but there’s still elements of production where you can have you know smoke and lights and different cameras. There’s a million things you can do with it to really add to the essence of that presentation, so I think there’s so much more that we can do with that. The theme itself hits even in a you know a Knights of Columbus or a high school gym, you hear it and it gives me goosebumps every time so that’s why I think it’s it’s a tremendous piece of work.”
