Beat the Champ is the upcoming 15th studio album by the Mountain Goats, to be released on April 7th, 2015, by Merge Records. The album's focus is on professional wrestling, though band member John Darnielle has stated that several of its songs are “really more about death and difficult-to-navigate interior spaces than wrestling.”
The album was announced by Merge on January 20th, 2015, after which the second track, “The Legend of Chavo Guerrero,” was released for streaming on the label's SoundCloud page. Shortly afterwards it became available for pre-order, where the large number of orders caused the site to crash.