Pro wrestling veteran Grado recently spoke with Shounak Chakrabarti from Inside the Ropes about various topics.
One of the highlights was his experience with music legend Madonna, who declined his request to use “Like A Prayer” as his entrance theme music during his time in TNA.
Grado said, “I’ve been in a bit of a bother in the past with Madonna; I’ll never forget it. Years and years ago, when I first started using ‘Like A Prayer,’ another company that I wrestled for tried to get the song to be played for one another, it was actually for Impact. And we got an email back from a record company. I’ll never forget it, I’m sure it was Universal Records, and it said the following request to use ‘Like A Prayer’ has been denied by Madonna, right, so it’s Madonna herself.”
On Jonathan Ross nearly asking Madonna about it:
“Now I ended up doing a ‘Say Yes Madonna’ campaign, it ended up trending worldwide. Loose women were wanting to talk to me; I had Jonathan Ross; he was getting absolutely pelted on Twitter because he was supposed to be interviewing Madonna that weekend on his show. Jonathan Ross decided to DM me because a lot of the Grado fans that were supporting me back then were going, ‘You need to ask Madonna, why is Grado not getting to use Like A Prayer?’ And he said, ‘Look, I’ll tell you right now, if there’s any time, I will ask Madonna about you using her music.’ He says, ‘But we’re going to have very little time there.’”
On why it didn’t happen:
“Now that same week, it’s so weird, right, the Brit Awards happened. I don’t know if you remember this, but Madonna kicked off her song. She was at the top of her stage, she had a big black cloak, and she was about to sing one of her songs, but she ended up falling on her arse. Did you see that? Yeah, yes. Right, so I decided, because at the time, you know, that she, she didn’t let me use her song, well I thought I’d be funny by tweeting a picture of me with like a black sheet, because she was held under a black sheet, it was all these people on the sheet. So I decided to put up a tweet, sorry officer, I’ve been at home all night. That ended up making the press, obviously, because I started to take the peel away a bit, because Madonna fell, and then I got a message from Jonathan Ross saying, ‘You’ve completely messed it up now, there’s no chance I’m bringing up you using Like A Prayer.’ So I’ve had this sort of problem with the song for years and years and years, but you know what, if it comes to the bit, and ‘Like A Prayer’ isn’t used, then I’m sure the fans in attendance have got great singing voices, they can help me out, what do you think?”
