Songfacts®:

• "Winner Takes It All" (the rock song, not the one from Abba) was written for the 1987 movie Over The Top, starring Sylvester Stallone as a championship arm wrestler. In the music video, Hagar and Stallone arm wrestle. Hagar wins.
• Sammy Hagar was a member of Van Halen at the time - he joined the band two years earlier, replacing David Lee Roth as lead singer. His bandmate Eddie Van Halen, the guitar player in the group, played bass on this song - it was the first time Eddie played bass on a song that was released. Later in 1987, Hagar put out an album called I Never Said Goodbye that Eddie co-produced. That one contains a song called "Eagles Fly" that also includes some bass playing by Eddie.
• "Winner Takes It All" was written by Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock, wrote many movie hits of the '80s, including songs from the movies Flashdance and Top Gun. They also wrote "Meet Me Half Way" for Over The Top, which was recorded by Kenny Loggins for the movie.
• You don't really think of Sammy Hagar as an '80s movie soundtrack guy, but in addition to this contribution to Over The Top, he also wrote and performed the title track to the 1981 movie Heavy Metal and did a song called "This Girl Gets Around" for Footloose.