The Magnificent Seven: The Top 7 Pro Wrestling T-Shirts

The wrestling t-shirt has grown into a part of the fabric of the business—a key source of revenue for wrestling promotions and individual wrestlers alike, but moreover a way in which fans demonstrate their support and even communicate their identities to fellow wrestling fans and the world beyond.

This week, I’m taking a look at the top seven pro wrestling t-shirts.

#7. Roddy Piper: Hot Rod

Nowadays, a lot of wrestlers wear their own t-shirts when they walk to the ring or when they deliver promos. While the marketing value is obvious, when we look at what’s happening in more objective terms, it’s a pretty strange phenomenon. After all, when else in life would it be socially acceptable to wear a shirt emblazoned with your own face or extolling your own virtues? You’d have to be a pompous jerk to wear something like that, right?

“Rowdy” Roddy Piper was exactly that jerk.

In the early 1980s, Piper wore his iconic white t-shirt with the red collar and cuffs, Hot Rod blazing across the chest as a way of selling himself, and assembling an unforgettable look. Later in his career, as a face, the shirt was already as much a part of his signature attire as his kilt, and the stigmas were forgotten in, sending fans in a frenzy to buy their own copies of the shirt.

Piper may not have been the first wrestler to have a t-shirt, but he certainly had one of the most simple, memorable designs ever.

#6. EC F’N W

I would argue that there has only been one time in wrestling when the t-shirt of a company was more over than the t-shirt of an individual star, tag team, or faction. ECW was different in so many ways—the EC F’N W shirt was symbolic of so many of them.

In the mid-to-late 1990s, being an ECW fan meant being in on the joke—recognizing that the WWF and WCW were behind the times and lame, and recognizing that ECW put on better matches, developed more creative characters, and delivered edgier storylines on a fraction of the budget and with a fraction of the audience. Being a fan of the original ECW was like being a fan of a novel before it’s a bestseller or a major motion picture, and like being a fan of an indy band long before they sign with a major record label. The ECW t-shirt was a badge of pride for so many fans of that era, with the extra F’N not only funny, but earnestly communicating the way in which the company represented angry young men was fundamentally different from its more mainstream, family-friendly alternatives.

#5. CM Punk: Best in the World

The date was July 17, 2011. The date CM Punk’s contract was set to expire. WWE booked him to challenge John Cena for the WWE Championship in what, by all rights, looked to be a forgettable pay per view main event in which Cena crushed someone lower than him on the card, albeit with the footnotes that it would mark the end of a fairly distinguished run for Punk, and that it would happen in front of his hometown crowd in Chicago.

Then things changed.

Punk delivered what fans have since labeled “the pipebomb” promo in which he gave a worked shot account of what was wrong with WWE—a five-minute soliloquy that not only wowed the crowd but went darn near viral, drawing attention from casual and former fans and making Punk the most talked about act in all of wrestling for a good long while.

Punk showed up in Chicago, as did this t-shirt—a relatively plain white one with a a picture of his taped up first with an X over it, grabbing a lightning bolt, the words Best in the World written on the back. All white, black, and red, the shirt looked alternative, DIY, and fundamentally punk. It fit his character—and his fanbase—to a tee (no pun intended).

Punk wore the shirt to the ring that night, put on a darn-near five-star match with Cena, walked out champion, and kayfabe walked out of the company. Thus, WWE’s version of the Summer of Punk was told, culminating in a SummerSlam rematch between Punk and Cena, the build for which saw Punk’s new shirt sell at a near record pace—briefly topping Cena’s previously untouchable merch numbers, and providing a makeshift uniform for Punk’s unconventional legion of fans. It’s a special shirt, marketing a special talent in a special angle.

#4. Hulk Hogan: Hulkamania/Hulk Rules

The original Hulkamania T-shirt—bright, mustard yellow with red lettering—was, for quite some time, the most recognizable bit of wrestling attire in the world. It’s bright, bold, unabashedly declarative of the pride Hogan’s fans took in him and in the WWF product altogether for a period of time in the 1980s into the early 1990s.

This shirt has spawned several spinoffs riffing off the original insignia—all the more iconic for the recurring image of Hogan marching to the ring in a version of the shirt cut to a tanktop, with slits in the back to facilitate ripping the shirt open upon his arrival to do combat.

The Hulk Hogan era was when, in so many ways, the WWF blew things wide oopen when it came to marketing wrestling merchandise. This t-shirt was one of the cornerstones of that enterpirse.

#3. Degeneration X

At the onset of the Attitude Era, DX was just a little bit cooler.

Whether it was Shawn Michaels and Triple H making dick jokes on cable TV, or the later, fuller stable that included X-Pac and the New Age Outlaws setting the crowd on fire over the mic, DX was a near-perfect complement to Stone Cold’s over-the-top redneck anti-authority persona; a bit more juvenile, a bit more cool, and positively ripe for merchandise marketed toward teenagers.

The “S*ck It” on the back didn’t hurt matters, either.

Whereas Austin was cool in part due to his absurd antics like driving a beer truck into an arena and attacking another grown man with a bedpan, Degeneration X’s crotch chops and lewd promos may have been the more accessible, direct reflection of who young men of my generation wanted to be at the time. Their original, signature t-shirt encapsulated all if this in its sleek, simple, black and white design, presenting a look custom made to fit no less naturally in high school hallways than crowded arenas on Monday nights.

#2. n.W.o.

So much of what I wrote about the original DX applies, too, to the group’s sibling Kliq-spawned stable, the New World Order. The nWo came first, and served as a Vanguard of the less cartoonish wrestling paradigm of the late-1990s. The group’s black and white logo-bearing t-shirt rapidly grew all the more pervasive than DX’s, and is arguably the most influential wrestling t-shirt of ever, inspiring memorable shrits to follow for brands including the nWo Wolfpack, the Latino World Order, the Blue World Order, and what was arguably Randy Orton’s most memorable shirt with RKO portrayed in nWo lettering and format.

While the nWo itself grew bloated and over-exposed, in its early stages it was about as hot as any act in wrestling has ever been—all the more remarkable for ostensibly being a heel group. This shirt represented the group, and all the more so a hip, counter-culture identity.

#1. Steve Austin: Austin 3:16

By the time Steve Austin exploded courtesy of his iconic King of the Ring victory promo, double-turn at WrestleMania 13, and war with Vince McMahon, the WWf had figured out its merchandising scheme. Major stars necessarily had their own t-shirts and for his time, Austin 3:16 proved simple, direct, and almost functioned as an inside joke given that non-wrestling fans (or the set that climbed n the band-wagon after Attitude was already in full swing) might have missed its origin and meaning.
Most of the shirts listed in this countdown have had some level stigma attached to them over time—the nWo story grew unwieldy and ran too long; DX returned as a parody of itself a decade after its heyday; Hulk Hogan has a love-hate relationship with fans; CM Punk took his ball and went home. Contrary to all of that, Steve Austin—and by extension his most iconic t-shirt—has stood the test of time—a red hot act in its time, put on by an all-time great all-around professional wrestler whose time in the limelight was, if anything, cut short due to injury.

Which t-shirts would you add to this list? Shirts for Cactus Jack and The Rock just missed my countdown. Let us know what you think in the comments section.

Read more from Mike Chin at his website and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.