10 Strange Wrestling Attire Choices - Explained
Bad guys wear black - and pink, in the case of Bret Hart and...Steve Austin?!
Attire and aesthetic is crucial to the presentation of a pro wrestler.
Imagine Stone Cold Steve Austin wearing neon yellow long tights. It doesn't work because Steve Austin played the role of an ass-kicking avatar for the working classes. He was devoid of pretension. He wore plain black trunks to reflect his antihero edge and no-frills brawling style.
Bret Hart wore black, but he also wore pink. It was an iconic and audacious colour scheme - pink was "a choice", in the cartoonish alpha male battleground of the 1980s - but the colour scheme worked because it fused the legitimacy and beauty of his incredible technicality. The Rockers and several other babyfaces of that era wore what is known as "happy guy tights" to get over as a vibrant, kid-friendly high-energy acts. The Fiend wears a clown mask of sorts because, well, you get the idea.
Bad, strange or out-of-character gear removes the audience from the immersion as much as a major downer of a botch does. Hell, even gear that is misinterpreted can ruin the vibe - Eddie Kingston was savaged in some circles for paying tribute to Mitsuharu Misawa at AEW Full Gear 2020 - but that's on them for being pig ignorant.
Still, there's a line to straddle, and some of the greats failed at it too...
10. Shawn Michaels Looks Like A Soccer Mom At Survivor Series 2002
Shawn Michaels experimented with his colour scheme a bit during his first major singles run.
He would often wear red, in the early-to-mid 1990s, to symbolise his status as a heel heartthrob. Deeper into the decade, he celebrated his rise to the main event as a babyface by wearing white and gold at WrestleMania XII. This was a fantastic choice; the former colour represented the innocence of the "boyhood dream," and the gold symbolised his realisation of it.
Despite a phenomenal run of matches, the bit didn't take. He wasn't a draw at that level - people didn't buy the act, nor his association with Jose Lothario - and so he turned heel in 1997 and wore black, as bad guys do. He also wore just his kegs, to quote an immortal line from Bret Hart's autobiography, to represent "the stripper that he must have been in a previous life".
Less fantastic was his gear at Survivor Series 2002, at which he realised the dream once again after four years in grim exile.
Adopting brown as "earth" to symbolise his "creation by God," it looked like Shawn had sh*t himself. The bowl cut didn't much help this inadvertent "soccer mom" look, which he abandoned immediately thereafter.
He's still sh*tting himself to this day, however, when he logs onto ShowBuzzDaily on Thursdays.