[sebbie]

What Professional Wrestlers wore

I grew up in the 1950s and early 1960s. We got our first black and white TV set in late 1955 and I would have been only about 8 years old. Interestingly, one of the first late night shows I saw in that period was what passed for the professional wrestling of the day. Even way back then we knew a lot of what we were seeing was basically staged, and despite the theatrics the last thing the two guys on the mat wanted to do was injure themselves in taking falls. But even on the old TV sets we could see that the mat was not at all like concrete but springy, almost like a trampoline, This made the throws and falls look more dramatic.

Me? I was not much interested in wrestling the sport, but what caught my eye at that early age was the costumes the guys wore. They were like a swim brief, fit tight, but were quite high-waisted—fitting to the wrestlers’ belly buttons. Think swim brief with maybe a 6-inch side but no leg like a mid cut would have. Even at age 8 or 9 I thought these briefs were way cool and I knew I would really enjoy wearing one. Here I was, well before puberty and I still wanted to wear something like that, something that clearly outlined the shape of my package.

Pro wrestling in those days seemed to attract a female audience, who though not admitting it were attracted to seeing the guys cavorting on the mat in the tight briefs. I suppose there was a male audience—some guys interested in seeing the actual wrestling for the theatrics labeled a sport, but there no doubt was a significant homo-erotic male audience as well, maybe what could be called a gay-curious component.

The idea of wearing just a brief as a professional wrestler continued for decades, but what did change is that the industry started to see that the briefs the guys wore was part of the reason there was an audience, and the briefs started getting a lower and lower rise and seemed to keep fitting snugger and snugger, all the better for attracting an audience.

By the 1980s things had gotten really snug and while not yet quite bodybuilder posing trunks, the sides had gone to 3 inches then maybe 2 inches. This did not seem to hurt either ticket sales or TV audiences, in fact, quite the opposite—so you had all these big, muscular guys cavorting on a mat in front of a big live and TV audience in a minimal brief, with each wrestler wearing a different color.

There is a Netflix series “The Toys that made us”. Season 3 episode 4 deals with toys based on professional wrestling figures. Toy dolls were big sellers for girls, but dolls of either sex did not sell well for boys, with very limited exceptions. Girls liked dolls but boys wanted “action figures” to play with. Action figures based on military themes have been around for a long time, culminating with GI Joe who was actually a male doll in military garb but marketed to boys as an action figure not as a doll. And the toy companies were always looking for other ideas to create action figures on other themes that would be in effect a way to make dolls that would appeal to boys. One idea? Professional wrestling action figures.

And all of this happened just when the wrestling briefs had gotten quite skimpy, and so the action figures had to be made similarly, the poseable figure unclothed save the tiny brief in the color whatever the wrestler was wearing. You soon had a bunch of different wresting action figures in blister packs wearing only a snug-fitting brief in a bright color. And boys were buying these as action figures not male dolls and simultaneously learning that it was more than OK to be wearing a snug-fitting colored brief—this in a period of time when a colored brief for swimming had become popular even for young males who were not on a swim team. Mere coincidence? Maybe not! At that point in time the idea that somehow only gay guys would be caught wearing a swim brief had not yet surfaced to any degree.

It was later, and then only gradually that some wrestlers adopted more elaborate costumes that typically covered more but more individualized designs still with lightweight compression gear. Some of these were a variation based on a college-style wrestling singlet. Other wrestlers wore tights that extended to the ankles, and the poseable action figures were made to mimic whatever the popular wrestler of the day was wearing in the ring.

Still, nearly all of the early wrestling action figures were clad only in a tight-fitting brief in a bright color and boys were buying this and playing with their action figures thus clad. This was not considered homoerotic in any way, just boys engaging in action-figure play with wrestling being popular way to engage two of the action figures.

If you have a Netflix subscription, the episode to watch is season 3 episode 4 that traces the development of these early, brief-garbed wrestling action figures aimed at a young male audience. This was really popular in the late 1980s extending into the 1990s—less so today.