Thriller!
Thriller night!
Rio
Just kidding, it’s thrill.
Derp, y’all. There’s a reason I posted this link. With all the lyrics for everything posted on so many websites these days, how is there even a question? One friend says one thing, the other friend says another, they google it and conversation over. Seriously.
Ok, we need resolution here. What possible word do Jinx and their friend think is being sung here? I’m struggling to think of what it could possibly be (well, I guess “chill” maybe.)
(SeaDragonTattoo - I don’t think the question is so much what the actual lyric is–which obviously can be Googled–but rather if anyone else hears the same as Jinx & pal. Unless “chill” is the answer, then, so far, no.)
Knowing Jinx’s tendency to start a thread and then not come back to it for a while, we may need to chill for a bit before we get the thrill of a reply. 
(And, for the record, I’d never heard the lyric as anything other than “thrill.”)
Skipping replies to not be influenced…
I always heard/sang:
“Thrill” of the fight
No idea what the actual lyric is.
“Dill”.
What? It’s obviously a song about pickles.
When the song came out (1982 or 83?), there were no internet lyrics sites, though. The question is what do you hear? From the time I first heard the song, I heard “thrill,” no mistake about it.
I would have agreed with everyone who says it’s clearly “thrill”. I don’t recall ever thinking it was anything else. However, just for fun I listened to it to see if I can guess what Jinx & co. were thinking and it does sound a bit like he’s saying “*feel *of the fight” or possibly even “fear”.
Is it, “Throat-warbler mangrove”?
Just letting the song play over in my head without actually listening IRL, I come up with “frame of the fight”
Then I listened to it. Yup, still ‘frame’
This happens to me a lot. Often it makes the lyrics a whole lot interesting, though somewhat lacking in the sense department
Random trivia: Joe Esposito’s “You’re the Best,” featured in The Karate Kid (1984), was originally intended to be used in Rocky III (which is the reason for the curious lyric, “History repeats itself”) but was later replaced with “Eye of the Tiger.”
Also, the version of “Eye of the Tiger” used in the film was a demo, but the finished version appears on the soundtrack.
Yeah, listening to it over and over until the words lose meaning, I do kind of hear almost a long “ee” sound there. I’m coming up with “cream of the fight” as my alternate lyric. Let’s see who wins!
thrill
Yeah, I hear thrill. But I do note that the percussion/guitar distortion does tend to cover up the “th” sound, and possibly makes the “r” sound hard to hear. So I could understand people hearing differently.
To be honest, I’m not sure I haven’t read the lyrics before and biased myself.
I was so, so wrong about this song.
It’s the eye of the tiger
It’s the cream of the crop
Rising up to the challenge of our rivals
And the last sole survivor
Stalks his way to the top
Don’t you know it’s his goal to controoooool
The eye of the tiger.
I thought it was “cream of the fight” too for the longest time. Made sense to me, the cream rises to the top.
The line I could never understand was “stalks his prey in the night”
I heard something like “talks’s ray in the night” but I knew that couldn’t be right
OP, come back and explain!
No, it’s *spelt *“Throat-warbler mangrove,” but it’s *sung *“Raymond Luxury Yacht.”