Last year I wrote a post on Black Friday about the cool wrestling related items one can pick up online or in the store. This year, I'm better versed in the world of indie (or is it indy?) wrestling, so I've moved away from the WWE and TNA shop zone sites. Don't get me wrong, they have good stuff too, but I want to focus on some of the "outside the box" deals I've come across.
First up is the Batiri. They of course are a trio from Chikara Pro, Wrestling is Fun, and AIW. Two demons and a goblin who are quite the online businessmen. Their site (click here for more) has a number of items up for grabs. Two have caught my eye. One being the new Batiri hoodie. As you can see it features the members as legendary rockers Kiss. It's an awesome design, and they're running deals with it on their website. The other thing from this threesome that I actually bought was their Mystery Bag. Although the experience was not exactly what I thought it would be, I did have fun with the reveal. Check out the video below for the details. None the less, if you do order something from them, they do a good job getting it shipped out and communicate well via email if you run into any problems.
Barbershopwindow.com
The Barbershop Window is a relatively new site, at least to me. I discovered it about a year ago and I love their selection of tshirts. Some of their designs and ideas are very original. The Monsoon/Heenan 2012 was a neat idea for the recent presidential race. They've also done fundraising tshirts to help wrestlers in need. The Kamala one they did earlier in the year was really neat. Co-blogger Chad picked up a couple of their shirts late last year. He bought me the "Will You Stop" featuring Gorilla Monsoon and he got himself Vince McMahon's "What a Maneuver" design. Even non-wrestling fans ask me about the Gorilla shirt. It's one of my favorite shirts to wear.
coltmerch.com
Colt Cabana may be the king of merchandising. He's a one man show, traveling city to city all over the world selling his wares. He has a ton of cool shirts and poster designs on his website Colt Merch. When he wrestled at AAPW's Zero Hour back in October (which will also soon be available on DVD, check here for details soon) I picked up a poster. I had Colt sign it too. I haven't done anything with it yet, as I plan to create some kind of My 1-2-3 Cents backdrop for the YouTube channel after the first of the year. Colt's poster will be a part of it. But if you're not into posters, like I said, there's plenty of other things there. He personally ships everything himself too. To me it's good knowing that my purchase is going directly into Colt's (or whatever indie star's) pocket and not through several other channels along the way.
I've only scratched the surface here. There are plenty of great items out there and for fairly reasonable prices. Good luck in your pursuits. Thanks for reading.
When I was a kid I had a few WWF t-shirts. One was of the Junkyard Dog. I'm guessing I was probably about 11 or 12 at the time. Then I got an anti-Roddy Piper shirt. It was the height of his heel run and says "Real Men Don't Wear Skirts!" My parents brought it down to my house from storage and just for kicks I tried it on. As you can tell from the pic, it's definitely working overtime.
The one shirt that has stood the test of time for me is my Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff one. I got it for my 14th birthday in 8th grade. It was a little big on me then, and to this day it still fits. It's been 25 years and I still wear it on occasion, usually just for videos as it is so thin now you can read the newspaper through it.
A fool for Old School
When my wife and I were dating, she took the shirt and said she threw it away. Like I said, it is thin and full of holes and at that point was about 10 years old. She didn't really trash it and was only hiding it to make me go on a wild goose chase for it. So as a bit of revenge, I wore the shirt under my tuxedo shirt at our wedding. I don't think she was too impressed with it though.
I don't really buy wrestling shirts anymore. I do have a couple of hand-me downs from Chad and I bought a Wrestlemania 22 jersey to commemorate my first trip to the biggest show of them all. Last year Chad gave me a "Will You Stop?" shirt from Barbershop Window. I wear it quite often and people ask me about it all the time. I will say that many of their designs are funny and I would love to add more to my collection, but as you've read in previous posts, I'm paying for a return trip to Wrestlemania and of course WrestleCon.
Nerd alert
I do wear the two different versions of the My 1-2-3 Cents t-shirt too. That's done mostly as a marketing tool. When trying to sell them failed, we started giving them away. At the April Chikara show in Lafayette, Indiana Dasher Hatfield, Tim Donst, and Arik Cannon were all recipients. During a recent interview on From the Rafters Radio, Donst said he wears his to the gym. That impressed me.
Do you have any wrestling t-shirts? Do you wear them in public? What's your favorite? Post here or on Facebook.
