BEST OF BULLDOG
My Visit To The Pro Wrestling Tees Store
Originally published May 20, 2019
Recently, Mrs. Bulldog and I traveled to Chicago for our first time together, determined to eat as much deep-dish pizza as possible, take in Lake Michigan and all the other incredible scenery and, yes, look for some cool wrestling merch for this website.
Fine, I was solely responsible for that last part.
The Pro Wrestling Tees store is (technically) a 15-minute drive from downtown Chicago. I say "technically" because our journey was made quite a bit slower due to inclement weather and a less than courteous Uber driver.
There was a Mick Foley meet and greet earlier that day, but given I've already met him, I didn't see a great need to subject my wife to hours of lineups.
The store was smaller than I expected, but the brick motif was packed with dozens and dozens of different kinds of wrestling T-shirts, ranging from retro (Hulk Hogan, Andre The Giant, Bobby Heenan) to modern (AEW, NXT) to really obscure (read: wrestlers and promotions I'd never even heard of before).
In terms of value for dollar.... the shirts were typically priced the same as they are on prowrestlingtees.com, with the only bonus being you save shipping costs (which can be a difference maker when something ships to Canada). There were also clearance racks throughout the store for the budget concscious among us (read: me).
If shirts aren't your thing (well, why would you make the schlep down to the Pro Wrestling Tees store?), there are also lots of other wrestling-related items, including hats, socks, pins, DVDs, fanny packs and a collection of Micro Brawlers.
For the uninitiated, Micro Brawlers are statue-like minifigures, somewhat similar to WWE Mystery Minis, only less sculpted and three-dimensional. They are exclusively to the Pro Wrestling Tees family and the diverse collection includes Ricky Steamboat, The Young Bucks, CM Punk, Papa Shango, Tama Tonga, Jim Ross, Andre The Giant, Marty Scurll, Vader, The Road Warriors, Thr Brooklyn Brawler, Eddie Guerrero, Swoggle, Cody, Davey Boy Smith and Joey Ryan.
While the Micro Brawlers are fun and normally I'd been all over something like this, they were like $13 a piece and I can't imagine even trying to collect all of them... so I left them on the shelf for the time being.
What did I end up buying? For beginners, I found a shirt of The Major Wrestling Figure Podcast on the clearance rack. The shirt, which features Zack Ryder and Curt Hawkins in the Back To The Future 2 pose, was just too awesome to pass up.
I also purchased a t-shirt grab bag, which, for about 30 bucks, included unique T-shirts of Ricky Steamboat, Kurt Angle and Johnny Gargano. No issues with any of these selections...
Was The Pro Wrestling Tees store worth the time and effort? Going to say that it's worth an initial visit (especially if you have the time and patience to coordinate it with a wrestler meet and greet), but there probably wasn't anything there that would convince me to come back any time soon.
Not unless they start serving deep-dish pizza there as well...