Overcoming The Unfashionable Uniforms At Survivor Series

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One of my favorite things to write about in wrestling is ring gear, and wrestling fashion in general. Coming to wrestling from a background in theatre arts, I think a lot about how the clothing a character wears, and the colors they surround themselves with, affect our understanding of who they are. So whenever possible, I like to talk about the gear at WWE’s big PPVs, where most wrestlers decide to show off something new and fancy.

There’s just one problem: This is Survivor Series, and specifically Survivor Series in the era of the Second Brand Split. That means almost everyone is expected to wear T-shirts with their brand logos, so that even people who don’t watch weekly TV know whether they’re representing Raw or Smackdown. You can cut up those T-shirts however want, but at the end of the day you’re still wearing a pretty ugly T-shirt that all your friends are wearing too. That’s just no way to be stylish. On the other hand, that makes it all the more impressive when some fo the superstars manage to look cool anyway. With the understanding that there are far fewer good looks for this show than usual, I’d like to spotlight a few who pulled it off, or at least did their best.

Poor Shinsuke Nakamura. He’s on Smackdown but usually wears red, in the name of brand solidarity, he wore this fantastic new jumpsuit in Smackdown blue. As you can see, it looks great on him. It’s not normal-people clothing, and it’s not exactly wrestler clothing. It’s glam-rocker clothing, which is Shinsuke’s preferred aesthetic. Unfortunately, you had to look to social media to see the whole jumpsuit, because somebody made him wear a Smackdown T-shirt overtop of it for his match against Seth Rollins, thus quashing Shinsuke’s unique identity. Is it just me, or is this symbolic of his whole WWE career