“The Legend of Chavo Guerrero” is, of course, just what it sounds like, but it’s also an explainer for the album as a whole.

Track: “The Legend of Chavo Guerrero”
Album: Beat the Champ (2015)

“The Legend of Chavo Guerrero” is sneaky. The first few times you hear it, you’ll probably enjoy it and follow the story. The important parts aren’t hidden, but “you called him names to try to get beneath my skin // now your ashes are scattered on the wind” could, maybe, seem to be less serious than it is. At the time of writing this, the Mountain Goats are famous on a video app because people discovered “No Children.” If that’s all you know, you might hear this one and not piece together the characters from The Sunset Tree.

The foreground story is pretty obvious: Chavo Guerrero is a cool wrestler. He’s passed away now, but at the time he was really into the song and appeared in the music video, which had to be an incredible thrill for the whole band. I watched his son wrestle when I was a kid, and I get where young Darnielle is coming from, here. “I hated all of Chavo’s enemies, I would pray nightly for their death” is a grand statement, but it’s how you feel when wrestling really matters to you.

“The Legend of Chavo Guerrero” gets the theme of Beat the Champ across so directly that it might not work if it weren’t such an incredible song. Even the ending kills me every time, with the most hopeful, sincere message possible: “I don’t know if that’s true, but I’ve been told // it’s real sweet to grow old.”