BomberPat

42 minutes ago, Nick James said:

I haven't really ever listened to one of Cornettes shows outside of the odd clip here or there, but who exactly are his target audience? 

It's clearly not AEW fans and I can't see most WWE fans either, so who are his audience? Those fans that only watch Indie Wrestling? Those who think they're above wrestling and that WWE and AEW are too mainstream? TNA fans? 

I genuinely have no idea.

Mostly it's old blokes who haven't actually watched wrestling in years, but still get enjoyment out of being told it's all terrible now, and wasn't everything so much better when you were a kid?

The problem is that as Cornette shows himself to be increasingly either biased, out-of-touch, or just way off the mark when it comes to modern day wrestling, it starts to call into question how reliable or accurate he actually is when it comes to wrestling history.

The main thing is that he's a racist, misogynist old prick, though. That should take precedent over him having bad opinions about Orange Cassidy.

Cornette's a gimmick, and increasingly one I imagine even he's sick of. There's no point listening to him any more even if you usually enjoy it, because he's a broken record and it takes him longer and longer to record an episode now, so by the time he's done it, all of his snitch-tagging catchphrase-spouting fans have already said everything he's going to say on Twitter.

10 hours ago, wordsfromlee said:

Who do you reckon would book this match? I know most wrestling promotors are still carny as fuck and will book pretty much anything if it'll make them a buck but I can't see WWE/AEW/TNA touching this with a barge pole. Plus surely a lot would be put off promoting it because of the Ric Flair match debacle.

GCW seem like the obvious choice.

If not Conrad for all the reasons mentioned already, I imagine it will be a similar set up of a one-off show built around this one match, rather than an existing promotion. 

As for opponents, I can't see it being anyone other than Matt Cardona. I know Foley has made some noise in the past about wanting to work with Moxley or Onita, as they're both people he quite notably never wrestled (he teamed with Onita once), but I don't see AEW letting Mox near this, and assuming Foley wants a singles match, I don't see Onita going for it. 

Thing is, the Onita formula is the only kind of match Foley has any business working- zero bumps, just walk around hitting people with a barbed wire 2x4 and letting them bump for him, create the illusion that he was in a big dangerous deathmatch but keeping the amount of risk to the man himself minimal. I don't see that being what Foley goes for, though, he's going to want a singles match and a big daft bump.

It's wild thinking that he's one of the biggest stars ever, that once upon a time he could have finished up as a beloved WWE legend, perhaps his last match or even just a retirement ceremony could have involved The Rock, The Undertaker, Triple H....and now we're debating who's carny enough to book it and work it.

10 hours ago, The Dart said:

The Dudley Boyz v Atsushi Onita & Mystery Partner is on at the ECW Arena soon.  I did wonder for a moment if it could be Foley but I’m assuming it’ll be the Sandman.

If he has another match it’s going to be heavily promoted, not a mystery partner.

That same show has a mystery guest ref for one match, that’ll probably be Foley.

Assuming this is Battleground Pro? They generally run the Arena, and seem to be the only US company booking Onita. They're run by Rob "lol ill pretend u said 18" Feinstein.

2 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

I don't know as well as someone living in the US, but I get the impression from political commentators that the Republicans enjoy a lot of support from the Latino communities; they seem to take it as a given that there is a heavy conservative presence, possibly connected to modern Catholicism.

there's also a lot of conservatism among Hispanic communities like the Cubans in Florida whose families fled Castro, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's similar stories among those who fled various South American countries for fear of Communism and became devout Republicans as a result.

I was reading something from Jamelle Bouie recently, who said that it's not so much an uptick in black Republicans as the connection between black voters and the Democrats isn't nearly as strong for the younger generation, and it's because church attendance is decreasing in that same demographic, and black Americans are the only demographic where regular church attendance correlates with voting Democrat more than with voting Republican.

don't get me started on book backlogs. Aside from the usual buying stuff constantly on a whim, I tend to fall down research rabbit holes and micro-obsessions, and then hardly ever getting around to reading any of them. I've got about seven different books on the Cambridge Spies and three different biographies of Leonora Carrington sitting on my bookcase unread.

I am dangerously close to biting the bullet and buying a PS5 so I can play the new Final Fantasy 7 thing.

Just keep telling myself that I need to get through my current backlog first, but given that most of that backlog is on PS4 and can presumably just be transferred across to PS5, it's not a compelling argument. 

they also have Nick Wayne, who's much better at being a smarmy punchable little dick who can also do some cool moves. Sammy has been eclipsed in pretty much every area by someone else in AEW, hasn't meaningfully progressed in ability, character or card position since his debut, and I doubt anyone would notice if he was never booked again. Cut him loose.

@LaGoosh - in terms of cutting something from the show and shifting to a Dynamite main event, I'd have gone with BCC vs. FTR.

It made sense to have Orange Cassidy losing the belt finally happen on PPV, and Roderick Strong had to win that match to prevent the Undisputed Kingdom from looking like a complete damp squib. I did find it funny that they all made their entrance with Wardlow for the Scramble, left, then came back out (minus Adam Cole) with Roderick Strong, left, then came back out again to celebrate with him. Getting their steps in, at least.

FTR vs. BCC meanwhile, was good, but there were points where it felt like the crowd were sagging and I think a lot of that was because they had decided it had to go long, and because it all felt a bit forced - I hate to be the "where's the story?" guy, as the story didn't need to be more than them both being super-competitive teams who want to win, but it's a match that felt like it was lacking something in terms of purpose and direction, even if it did turn out to be quite good. For the pacing of the show, I'd have maybe cut it. Not before the Scramble, though, that was a bag of bollocks.

I think closer to the end he was happily just breaking away from wrestling entirely - he was starting to get some feelers out about working with WWE on action figures and video games, but everything I remember hearing about him at the time was that he'd happily stopped dying his hair and beard and let himself go grey almost as a conscious break from having to be "on" all the time, and had become a very private person. He married his old childhood sweetheart, and after Brian Adams - who had been his bodyguard - died, didn't seem to have any contact with anyone in wrestling any more.

10 hours ago, JLM said:

Bryan Keith vs Penta vs Dante Martin. I'll be honest I was itching to get to Revolution so I skimmed through this one. I wanted Penta to win and was disappointed that he didn't. 

One of the things I really enjoyed about AEW early on is that I was always far more invested just in who would win or lose for winning or losing's sake, whereas in WWE that doesn't tend to matter that much, and you're second-guessing every booking decision based on the politics of it all - "well, they're going to want the belt on this guy so he has it in Saudi Arabia" or "they're not going to have the title change hands before Wrestlemania", or just the more deeply rooted "this isn't the kind of wrestler WWE normally pushes".

AEW for a long time was pleasingly free of that, and the downside of the CMLL relationship is that it's brought some of that in - I couldn't buy Penta winning this match, because of the CMLL deal apparently meaning that no other Mexican talent can wrestle on shows they wrestle on. It's a shame to have that kind of political reasoning colouring things.

yeah, I never really believed the Boneyard Match would be his last, and figured he'd get at least a quick squash at the first 'Mania with fans back in the audience. I don't think the pandemic era produced anything more cringeworthy or uncanny than him pausing for piped in chants of "Thank You 'Taker" from an invisible audience, even if it was followed by a holographic Paul Bearer.

The thing with Undertaker is that it always seemed that, left to his own devices, he was stuck in this cycle of "my body will tell me when to quit" followed by a bad match where his body very much told him to quit, but he responded to that by thinking "well, I can't go out like that, I need to go out on a better match", then he'd have a match he was somewhat happier with, so think he was good to keep going, then he'd have a bad match, and so on and so forth, repeat ad nauseam. What did him in, I think, was that Vince McMahon decided that he was retired, so it just wasn't up to him any more.

12 minutes ago, I Bent My Wookie said:

Shawn's age is wrong surely?

I've corrected Shawn's age now, must have been an unchanged copy and paste job.

Just now, Jazzy G said:

Is Taker's last match not that one against DX? Likewise Kane's? 

Nope - the DX tag was at Crown Jewel in 2018; Kane worked the Royal Rumble in 2021, and Undertaker had a run of profoundly weird matches after that - vs. Goldberg in Saudi Arabia, teaming with Roman Reigns against Drew McIntyre & Shane McMahon in a match that has absolutely disappeared down the memory hole, winning the "Tuwaiq Trophy Gauntlet" back in Saudi Arabia in 2020, and then the Boneyard Match the following month.

Kane also fit in a reign as 24/7 Champion, though under the name Mayor Glenn Jacobs, after the DX tag. 

in modern terms, I still can't get my head around Nick Jackson only being 34. Not that he necessarily looks older, but he certainly feels like he must be just in terms of number of years he's been around wrestling at a high level, so that's another one where exposure is the key, not the actual age.

Coming off the back of Sting going out in one of the most well-received retirement matches I can remember, and with a lot of praise for how he was able to retire on his own terms, I thought it was worth reflecting on what some legendary wrestlers final matches actually were, also tying in somewhat with the thread about wrestlers ages.

I thought I would look through the inductees into the WWE Hall of Fame and look at, according to Cagematch, what their last matches were. This means that if a wrestler has returned at any point after a formal "retirement match", that retirement is considered void, and only their most recent match is considered, rightly, their last match. Sorry Shawn Michaels.

 

• Andre The Giant

Andre The Giant, Giant Baba & Rusher Kimura defeat Haruka Eigen, Masanobu Fuchi & Motoshi Okuma - AJPW, @ Nippon Budokan, Tokyo, 4/12/1992

Age: 45
 

• Hulk Hogan

Hulk Hogan, James Storm & Sting def. Bully Ray, Kurt Angle & Bobby Roode - TNA House Show @ MEN Arena, Manchester, 27/1/2012

Age: 58
 

• Stone Cold Steve Austin

Steve Austin def. Kevin Owens - WWE Wrestlemania 38 @ @ AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, 2/4/2022

Age: 57

• Ric Flair

Ric Flair & Andrade El Idolo def. Jay Lethal & Jeff Jarrett - JCP Ric Flair's Last Match @ Nashville Municipal Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee, 31/7/2022

Age: 73
 

• Randy Savage

Randy Savage, AJ Styles & Jeff Hardy def. Jeff Jarrett, Kevin Nash & Scott Hall - TNA Turning Point 2004 @ Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, 5/12/2004

Age: 52

• Roddy Piper

Roddy Piper & Bob Orton def. Mick Foley & Terry Funk - JCW Legends & Icons @ The Gathering Of The Juggalos, Cave-In-Rock Illinois, 12/8/2011

Age: 57

• Jimmy Snuka

Jimmy Snuka & The Patriot def. Mr TA & Brodie Williams - BTW @ Montgomery County Agricultural Fair in Gaithersburg, Maryland, 8/8/2014

Age: 71

• Sgt. Slaughter

Sgt. Slaughter & Jeff Starr def. Dalton Castle & "Man Scout" Jake Manning - NEW March Mayhem @ Sullivan County Community College in Loch Sheldrake, New York, 29/3/2014

Age: 65
 

• Dusty Rhodes

Randy Orton def. Dusty Rhodes, Texas Bullrope Match - WWE The Great American Bash @ HP Pavillion Arena in San Jose, California, 22/7/2007

Age: 61

 

• Terry Funk

Terry Funk & The Rock N Roll Express def. Jerry Lawler, Brian Christopher & Doug Gilbert - BTW @ Spartanburg Memorial Auditorium in Spartanburg, South Carolina, 23/9/2017

Age: 73

• Ricky Steamboat

FTR & Ricky Steamboat def. Brock Anderson, Jay Lethal & Nick Aldis - BTW Return Of The Dragon @ Dorton Arena in Raleigh, North Carolina, 27/11/2022

Age: 69

• Antonio Inoki

Antonio Inoki & The Great Sasuke def. Giant Silva & Red & White Mask - Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye 2001 @  Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Japan, 31/12/2001

Age: 58

• Shawn Michaels

D-Generation-X def. The Brothers Of Destruction, WWE Crown Jewel @ King Saud University Stadium in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 2/11/2018

Age: 53
 

• Jim Duggan

Gursinder Singh def. Jim Duggan, Destiny World Wrestling Sunday Night Power Slam @ Battle Arts Academy in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, 12/5/2019

Age: 65

• Abdullah The Butcher

Abdullah The Butcher vs. Bull Buchanan - No Contest, GCW Southern Legends Fanfest @ Pell City Civic Center in Pell City, Alabama, 9/10/2010

Age: 69

• Mick Foley

WWE Royal Rumble 2012 @ Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri, 29/1/2012

Age: 47

• Ultimate Warrior

Ultimate Warrior def. Orlando Jordan for the NWE World Heavyweight Title - NWE Summer Tour 2008: Return Of The Warrior @ Pavello Olimpico in Barcelona, 25/6/2008

Age: 49

• Jake Roberts

Jake Roberts def. IamThePROVIDER - BBOW No Limits Pro Wrestling @  Eagle County Fairgrounds in Eagle, Colorado, 2/9/2018

Age: 63

• Kurt Angle

Baron Corbin def. Kurt Angle - WWE Wrestlemania 35 @ MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, 7/4/2019

Age: 50

• The Undertaker

The Undertaker def. AJ Styles, Boneyard Match - WWE Wrestlemania 36 @ WWE Performance Center/Filmed On Location , 25/3/2020

Age: 55

• Kane

WWE 2021 Royal Rumble @ WWE ThunderDome (Tropicana Field) in St. Petersburg, Florida, 31/1/21

Age: 53

 

One thing that struck me, aside from the obvious takeaway that very few people get to choose their last match, or have it be a heavily promoted retirement match, is that contrary to popular wisdom, very of wrestling's biggest stars ever actually lost their final match. 

 

17 hours ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

His WWE run was cack. 1 mania match, 1 Raw match (technically 2 in the same night I guess) and 1 title match with Rollins. He was bought in as a novalty act and a way to flog that years WWE game. The novelty going full force at Mania when it turned into NWO vs DX and look, the teenage me probably wanted that, but not 30 something me. 
 

AEW treated him like a living legend, The Icon. He was protected and used in the right way in my opinion and he clearly loved his time there. TNA did a great job with him for the most part, but WWE never did. Almost as bad a run as Goldberg in 03.

I've always been curious about what Sting's WWE run would have looked like had he not got hurt, if there even were any plans for him beyond the Rollins match. Because him showing up at Survivor Series was a genuinely huge deal. Part of me thinks that he was done as a top star for them the moment he cut a promo on RAW for the Wrestlemania build - he did the very un-WWE thing of finding the in-ring camera guy and talking directly down the camera for a moment, rather than acting like the cameras don't exist. I think it's something that always made Sting's promos feel very lively and cool and different, but I bet Vince and/or Kevin Dunn were fuming about it backstage, decided that he was an amateur who couldn't hang in the big leagues, and decided to use his match to "win" a "war" all over again, against a company that had been out of business for twenty years. Whether it's a needless Triple H win, a phantom fast count against Hogan, or a pilled up Jeff Hardy, nobody at wrestling's top level has been expected to weather the amount of bullshit that Sting has and still put on a brave face about it, and that's why him getting to go out on his own terms with a promotion treating him like the biggest star in the world was so special.

There are a lot of reasons I'm really grateful for AEW existing, and Sting exemplifies a lot of them - having another major promotion again means that WWE's version of history, and of what wrestling could or should be, isn't the only one any more. It's not just the same revolving door of "legends" getting trotted out every time, and people who WWE haven't given the time of day or never knew what they had with, be that Sting or Tony Schiavone, are treated with respect and given their proper place, and get their own love of wrestling back. One of the other things that's great about AEW is that they do a much better job than WWE have done in years of anchoring their shows in a sense of place - if they're in Memphis, Dave Brown's there, here they're in North Carolina, so David Crockett's showing up, and people are booked to win in their hometowns rather than to be humiliated. Wrestling is a travelling circus, and it should feel like one, rather than like one characterless interchangeable arena after another, and a big part of how they booked Sting, especially in this retirement run, but really for the entire time they had him, was this sense of "fucking hell, Sting is wrestling in my town?!", that I very rarely get from WWE.

4 hours ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

It’s a shame one of those absolute GOATs of commentary got annoyed when Darby dove the Bucks into the announce table at the very beginning of the match. I’m not sure if that was him saying “shit!” just as it happened. Understandable reaction given his health issues, but he never quite managed to get into gear after that - what was the little rant about pronouns for? 

The "PRONOUNS, PAL!" thing is a bit that JR has been doing for years, in reference to a Vince McMahon edict that commentators should never use pronouns - you never say "he" or "him", you refer to the wrestler by name or nickname every single time. Why he thinks he needs to bang on about it so much in AEW I have no idea.

I don't know if it's Seth Rollins or the company as a whole that either don't understand their own history or think the audience are dumb enough to forget it, but the combination of "Cody Rhodes' best mate Seth Rollins has always had his back" and "Rollins and Reigns debuted together to bring power to the people" in one promo is pushing it either way.

4 hours ago, air_raid said:

It’s a good one. Them being in their mid 20s when they made their name as brawlers was fairly young for the time, but it’s mad to remember that getting the attention of and being signed by the WWF, getting a run, turning babyface, growing stale and being let go and heading back to WCW all happened in less than 3 years. By 2010 they’ve been out of “the big time” for more than 10 years unless you count Knobbs’ hardcore run in WCW (during which he looked like an anachronism). Plus due to lifestyle they aged (and fattened) rapidly. I think of that Dudleys feud as “Team 3D, 10 years after their prime vs The Nasty Boys, 20 years after theirs, TNALOL” but the difference in ages wasn’t 10 years.

This reminds me of the UK King of Trios that CHIKARA did; they had three teams representing different "golden ages" of British Wrestling. The "World of Sport" team was Mal Sanders, Danny Boy Collins and James Mason, the "Revival" team was Jody Fleisch, Jonny Storm & Johnny Moss, and the present day team was British Strong Style.

Across those teams, allegedly spanning multiple decades, James Mason's only two years older than Trent Seven on the "youngest" team, and younger than Jonny Storm on the middle team.

3 hours ago, Loki said:

But maybe it's a 90s thing, as there have always been older wrestlers around.  Harley Race was in his 40s as NWA champ, Bockwinkle was AWA champ in his 50s.  And in Japan, Billy Robinson was wrestling in his 60s, Lour Thesz as well.  Obviously those two were seen as "old" but it pushes back the boundary a bit.

On my point on WWE not "allowing" wrestlers to become old, I think it's something that was almost always done better in Japan; older wrestlers tend to get transitioned into largely working multi-man matches where they can tag in, hit all the old signature spots so the crowd are happy to see them, and that's enough. They're not often presented as on a level with younger wrestlers, but are treated with respect (guys like Fujinami or Fujiwara always needing everyone in the ring to pile on top of them in a New Japan Rambo to eliminate them), and there's a niche carved out for them. Keiji Mutoh having a full-blown singles championship run in NOAH stood out as unusual largely because most older blokes over there had moved on to some kind of unofficial Masters/Legends circuit. It's often similar in Mexico - a lot of the older guys often work trios matches against each other, and that's an accepted position on the card.

Saying that, Giant Baba always strikes me as one of the early exponents of stepping down the card to just do the hits in a six-man, and he was "only" 61 when he died and Meltzer had been describing him as "a corpse with skin stretched over his bones" ten years earlier.

you only need  to look at the 1980s Footballers Aging Badly Twitter account to see that it's not just wrestling where athletes of the past looked rough as arses.

A lot of it comes down to TV exposure. Aside from going bald and looking a bit leathery, Hogan was on WWF TV when it was all grainy and washed out colours through to the bright lights of Wrestlemania IX - the older your archive footage looks, the older you're going to seem. He felt older than he was in the mid-90s in part because he felt so much a product of the '80s. You don't tend to look at, for example, Finn Balor and think of him as a star rooted in the mid-10s because there's less distinction in terms of media tech or in terms of pop culture between now and then, even though Finn's the age Hulk Hogan was at the time of The Huckster and the Nacho Man. Damian Priest is only a year younger at 41, and he's presented as an up-and-comer just waiting for his breakthrough moment - and LA Knight is in the same boat, at the same age. 

One you overlooked from the Gimmick Battle Royal that blew my mind was Duke "The Dumpster" Droese; 33 years old at the time of that match.

 

Something that I think changed for the worse in how WWE approach older wrestlers, is that while I'm sure Jake Roberts and Bob Backlund didn't like being painted as knackered old men making an unlikely comeback during their mid-90s runs, the acknowledgement that they were older meant there were possibilities for some interesting storytelling around that fact, much as Terry Funk was arguably a more compelling character in his late '90s run than in his prime. Now, WWE don't lean in to the age of wrestlers at all - and I don't mean necessarily acknowledging that Bobby Lashley is pushing 50, because he looks incredible and there's no need to draw attention to that if you don't have to - but when older wrestlers are coming out of retirement, or on part-time schedules, they're always treated as if there as good as they ever were. In the build to a Wrestlemania match they would always talk about The Undertaker as "the old gunslinger", but then in the match you'd have Michael Cole screaming about how The Undertaker looked as good as ever. Outside of the matches with Daniel Bryan and with Ronda Rousey, Triple H never leaned into the fact that he was a semi-retired executive who shouldn't be able to hold his own against a full-time wrestler any more, he was still booked and presented as if he was in his prime and better than anyone. Not only does that sort of thing not help the full-time roster when, as we're seeing to some extent with The Rock now, there's always a sense of "stand aside lads, the real stars are here now" when anyone from the Attitude Era shows up, it also cuts off a whole avenue of potentially really interesting storytelling around whether an aging fighter still has what it takes, and of youth vs. experience.

Basically, in WWE you're as good as you ever were until the day you retire, and then within a year you're dancing backstage with Jimmy Hart and Sgt Slaughter while Ron Simmons makes a face.

I assume that the eventual twist in the story will be Mariah May manipulating Toni into granting her a title shot, or otherwise finding a way to betray and prove that she's been playing her along. She's faking the lack of confidence in front of Toni, and being her real self everywhere else. Toni will still fall for it, because it's established in canon that  she never watches Mariah's matches.

His last match before that Rumble spot was teaming with Terry Funk against Roddy Piper and Bob Orton for one of ICP's shows. His last singles was the Last Man Standing with Flair for TNA.

yeah, there's an old Jack Johnson line - "there's a difference between a deal and a fix". There's more ways to rig a fight than having everyone in on it - really any combination of fighters, referees and promoters can make it work, depending what the desired outcome is. 

13 hours ago, air_raid said:

There would be an easy was to get people to understand wrestling as a form of fiction by showing them “Wrestling Isn’t Wrestling” if you’re also able to suspend your disbelief that it wasn’t made by a wrong un.

It's amazing that someone can be the worst member of their own family even after their dad killed some kids with a helicopter.

My brother has a great running gag where, as he stopped watching wrestling in around 2001/2, he always pretends to be shocked at the discovery that Kurt Angle is bald now. It's a joke he's managed to keep going with me for more than 20 years, but every now and then he'll post it as a Facebook comment on something and people are always quick to "correct" him.

I definitely always have a bit of inherent dread when meeting wrestling fans for the first time - because quite often it's someone who doesn't really get the chance to talk wrestling in their day-to-day life, so want to talk your ear off with every fantasy booking idea they have for whatever's going on in WWE or AEW, or else they're the super-indie ultra who wants to show off. The first RevPro show I went to, there was a guy in front of me who kept trying to make smarmy comments, but they were all shit - when someone did a backbreaker, he said, "who does he think he is, Roderick Strong?" and, honestly, who are you even trying to impress with that? 

The bloke I mentioned before that I used to work with was fucking awful for it. This was mid-00s, and he'd handwrite a bunch of bad fantasy booking ideas at work, and then try and talk me through them all. Almost every single one of them involved one of three things - a gimmicky wrestler rejecting their gimmick so they could be a super-serious wrestler, a stable of second generation wrestlers, or someone getting called up from developmental and immediately being given a massive push. He tried to combine the first two by having Jesse turn on Festus and reveal himself to have been "Terry Gordy Jr." all along, and was absolutely apoplectic at my criticism that most people watching WWE in 2007 didn't know or care who Terry Gordy was. The other one I remember was Fit Finlay and Great Khali were in a nothing midcard feud, and he was absolutely convinced that Finlay was going to cut a promo saying, "you might be a giant, but I have my own giant, the Irish giant" as a way to introduce Sheamus, who is pretty much a full foot shorter than Khali. 

 

I think the point about fandom in general being more accepted is a really good one, as is that our average ages in relation to wrestling boom periods means most people have at least known something about wrestling at some point during their life. I own a lot of wrestling merch that I've just accumulated over the years, so I tend to wear them out and about a bit, and I've never cared for the whole idea that a wrestling shirt should look cool or really disguise the fact that it's a wrestling shirt, but then you're just asking that it's a secret handshake between wrestling nerds, and that feels way more shameful to me than just proudly wearing a T-shirt with a massive picture of Jeff Jarrett on it.