Bad T-Shirt Designs Are A Bipartisan Issue In Pro Wrestling

As a fan of the redneck-anime-LARPing theater pageantry that is professional wrestling, I’ve resigned myself to a perpetual hot-and-cold cycle with All Elite Wrestling and World Wrestling Entertainment. The tide of my affections always turns the same way: one company does something abysmally stupid, and suddenly the other only has to sit still and look competent by comparison. But if there’s one undisputed truth that could unite the rampant tribalism of the international wrestling community, it’s the fact that both suck at designing T‑shirts.

If you browse the AEW or WWE storefronts right now, I can guaran-damn-tee the offerings from either T-shirt section would fall into three categories: genuinely inspired classics with logos ruining the vibe, hyper-specific shirts referencing a title change that are scrapbooking as fashion, or a “graphic design is my passion” disaster slapping together a logo and a wordy catchphrase. And for the price they’re charging, most of these shirts are apparel I wouldn’t be caught dead in unless I couldn’t kick out from underneath a sentient pile of laundry. Deadass, whenever new merch drops from either company, my friends and I immediately DM each other—not because the shirts look beast, but to laugh at how they managed to out-ugly the last design they carted out. 

Even on their best days, wrestling shirts either suffer from the same minimalist, soulless trend plaguing modern NBA jerseys or they lean so hard into internet meme aesthetics that they’re dated the moment the ink dries. We’re talking designs that’d rival the weapons-grade cringe stitched into edgy DBZ shirts. And when a design does catch fire—like the Bullet Club logo’s chokehold on the international wrestling community in the 2010s—it gets run into the ground until it becomes the wrestling equivalent of the Ataktsuki cloud: once iconic, now shorthand for a guy you probably don’t want to hang out with. While some of them are fucking hilarious, I’m not trying to explain the lore behind why I’m wearing a shirt with the words “Big, Black, and Jacked” or “Scissor Me, Daddy Ass” across my chest. 

I write all this not to flex my ability to roast wrestling merch through prose; I’m writing this because I’ve finally identified the universal problem with professional wrestling t-shirts: They weren’t designed to be worn by the human body. 

Professional wrestling t-shirt designs feel like they’re tailor-made to be posters on a college freshman’s wall beside their poster of Pulp Fiction and the Naruto wall scroll they bought in Chinatown, not for a human person to walk around in. Honestly, half of them would work better as desktop wallpapers than clothing. As shirts, they’re absolute dog water. 

To be fair, things used to be far worse. WWE once insisted on embroidering its logo and the words “Authentic Wear” across the lower third of every shirt, completely ruining whatever design caught your eye. AEW fares better these days—leaning into the joke that they’re a “T‑shirt company”—but even then, you have to wade through a swamp of stinkers before finding something worth wearing. 

That being said, I still have my favorites, key among them being my Pro Wrestling Tees’ Run the Jewels CM Punk tank top (though that hoe has been out of print for years, what with Phil being back in the fed). Now, all I’m left with are designs that are either so specific that they’re incomprehensible to anyone who doesn’t watch weekly TV, or they’re just bowling-shoe ugly. 

John Oliver famously once said, “Wrestling is better than the things you like.” And shirts from my favorite wrestlers have been put to good causes like the Trevor Project and Local Hearts Foundation. My only wish is that more merch designs lived up to that boast instead of being yet another thing wrestling fans have to be embarrassed about.