Think about a professional wrestler in the ring. Real quick. Get a mental image in your head. Whether you’re a wrestling fan or not, chances are you pictured more than just a face. You probably pictured a whole look. Maybe it was Hulk Hogan with his iconic yellow tearaway shirt. Maybe it was Stone Cold Steve Austin in his black leather jacket, unbuttoned down the middle. Regardless, that professional wrestler almost certainly came with a look because apart from in-ring ability and perhaps microphone skills, there’s nothing about a professional wrestler that’s more important than the look.
And by look, I don’t mean face, and I don’t even necessarily mean how muscular they are. Sure, being attractive and in good shape is helpful, but what’s more important is being able to convey to an audience very quickly what your general disposition is and whether they should be rooting for you or not. You want to draw a fan’s attention in, and you want to make them feel something, either good things or bad things about you as a wrestler.
That’s why so many legendary wrestlers look like over-the-top theatrical characters, and it’s why, sometimes many decades later, many of us can still describe what some of these performers look like. So, let’s celebrate the best of the best. Here’s a rundown of professional wrestlers that look utterly ridiculous in the best ways, focusing primarily on WWE.
Hulk Hogan
This particular shot is from WrestleMania 6, but it could just as easily be from a few dozen other PPVs. Here, you can see The Hulkster tearing off his iconic yellow shirt, as well as rocking a headband and some yellow tights. In addition, you’ve got the mustache in all its glory, as well as the thinning hairline. Perhaps it’s because of my age, but Hogan slowly balding throughout the late 80s and 90s was also a vital part of the look. Also, I have to shout out Hulk for reinventing himself with an entirely separate iconic look a little more than a half-decade after this picture was taken when he supercharged the nWo and took on his black and white Hollywood persona in WCW.
Ravishing Rick Rude
Rick Rude had an absolutely fantastic mustache and some cool robes, but with him, it was always about the custom tights. For big matches, he’d get something special done. Over the years, that included everything from using his opponent’s face to his opponent’s wife to the title he was fighting over. My favorite, however, will always be his tights that were a tribute to himself. Nothing tells you to boo a villain quite like taking off a robe to reveal a tribute to themselves underneath. Real talk though, I’ve also gotta give a special shoutout to Rude for those abs– maybe the most defined in wrestling history. If I looked like that, I’d be showing them off too.
John Cena
Apart from Sid Vicious, who tried out jean shorts for a while in WCW and promptly broke his leg during a match, it’s hard to find many examples of wrestlers rocking jean shorts, outside, of course, John Cena. The wrestler turned movie star was the face of WWE for years, and throughout it all, he rocked his iconic jorts, as well as a series of rotating t-shirts that almost always preached sticktoitiveness and other positive qualities. It’s the jean shorts, however, that people remember, and hilariously, Cena has publicly admitted he only started wearing them because he tried cargo pants early in his career and had a wardrobe malfunction.
Macho Man Randy Savage
OHHHHHHH YEAH. The Macho Man didn’t necessarily have one distinctive look or color scheme, like many on this list, but he had a very distinctive vibe. It typically involved comically oversized sunglasses, a bandana, crown or colorful cowboy hat, vibrant tights and sometimes tassels. The overall package was like something out of Studio 54, and during interviews with his hands moving a mile a minute, it collectively gave off the impression of a flamboyant and unstable renegade you couldn’t look away from.
Seth Freakin' Rollins
Here at CinemaBlend, we have a Slack chat where we talk about wrestling. Seth Rollins would be happy to know his outfits get brought up more than any other modern superstar, which is crazy considering there’s some women on the roster who put a ton of effort into designing and rocking some amazing fits. No one is doing it better than Seth though, who has really integrated that flashiness and flamboyance into his unhinged babyface character who you can’t take your eyes off.
Stone Cold Steve Austin
After the Hulkamania-fueled wrestling boom of the late 80s and early 90s started to die down, the entire industry began reinventing itself to feel more edgy and modern. This led to a lot of superstars using more basic looks. In some ways Stone Cold Steve Austin epitomizes that, as the most popular superstar of the late 90s and early 2000s. He wore simple black trunks, black knee pads and black boots, but the truth is it all worked together to establish his persona. He shaved his head, came to the ring in an open black leather jacket with the sleeves cut off, and more often than not, he had a beer with him. The whole thing was iconic and worked perfectly for his character.
The Undertaker
Numerous WWE superstars have made the jump to Hollywood over the years and become crossover stars in the process, but The Undertaker is arguably the most famous wrestling persona ever who mostly just stayed a wrestler. That was largely due to how long he stuck with the character and how long he was near the top of the card. For well over two decades, he was one of the top guys in WWE, and while his character evolved over the years to change things up, his most iconic look with the long hair, black trenchcoat and creepy vibe remains the image people see in their minds.
The Mouth Of The South Jimmy Hart
People will argue about where Jimmy Hart falls on the list of all-time great wrestling managers against the likes of Bobby Heenan and Paul Heyman, but he certainly belongs somewhere on that Mt Rushmore. He was just such an iconic part of wrestling’s boom in the late 80s, and through that, he was able to work with a ton of different superstars. Along the way, he managed everyone from Hulk Hogan to The Hart Foundation, and every time he came to the ring, you had to know what his custom jacket was going to look like and how it would hype his wrestlers.
The Road Warriors/ Legion Of Doom
It’s hard for people these days to understand how popular The Road Warriors were in the 80s and 90s. They dominated so many different promotions, and it felt like they always won in memorable fashion. You don’t get booked that strong and you don’t get booked as a tag team to main event PPVs if you aren’t extremely over with fans. That popularity started with their look, which included face paint, spikey shoulder pads and haircuts that were weird, even for the time period. What a rush.
Demolition
You can’t talk about tag teams in the 1980s without also talking about Demolition. They were clearly inspired by The Road Warriors when they were first put together, but they quickly succeeded because they were great in the ring and had an extremely memorable visual look. It came complete with face paint and outfits that look straight out of some kind of niche adult film. Sometimes they also rocked masks, which made them even scarier, and was especially helpful when they brought on a third member and wouldn’t tell opponents which guys were going to wrestle prior to their matches.
Bam Bam Bigelow
Bam Bam Bigelow was the first person I ever saw with a head tattoo. I have a vivid memory of talking to my parents about it, and asking how it didn’t kill him. They didn’t care about wrestling and in retrospect, were probably mortified by my obsessive interest in something that involved people with head tattoos, but there’s a reason I could still draw his entire look, including his tights with flames on them, decades after he left WWE. Also, shoutout to Bam Bam for his appearance in the underrated 90s comedy Major Payne.
Luna Vachon
You can’t talk about Bam Bam Bigelow without talking about his mid-90s manager Luna Vachon. She could look perfectly normal when she wanted to, but inside a wrestling ring, she rocked an appearance that terrified children. Often it would include drawing on veins on half of her face and rocking a haircut with shaved parts on the side, decades before it became a trendy look. She was one of a kind, and there’s a reason so many modern female wrestlers cite her as a major influence.
Honky Tonk Man
Honky Tonk Man is hardly the first person to make his living impersonating Elvis, but the gimmick worked perfectly in the over the top world of professional wrestling in the 1980s. He got so despised at one point as a hated villain that WWE gave him the Intercontinental Championship and let him break the record for the longest ever run with the belt. Along the way, he’d routinely win by cheating and eventually, he became such a memorable character that WWE still uses his image in throwback ads.
Bray Wyatt
Bray Wyatt had a lot of gimmicks and memorable looks prior to his tragic passing, but his most memorable is probably The Fiend, which is pictured above. There’s something about it that just makes you uncomfortable to look at. It gives off an unstable energy far more powerful than other masked wrestlers. Personally, I also loved his swamplands cult leader as well, who was more normal looking on the surface but also gave off really creepy vibes.
Goldust
Wrestling has had a lot of over-the-top characters through the years, but I’m not sure I can remember one as memorable as Goldust whose entire persona was designed to make people uncomfortable. It’s like he didn’t want cheers or boos. He wanted people to be murmur about how they didn’t know what they were looking at. He’d touch his opponents inappropriately, touch himself inappropriately and wear outrageous outfits that involved things like putting a thong over his singlet.
Jake The Snake Roberts
Roberts used to throw his iconic snake, Damian, into the shower at live events when he wasn’t using it, and his fellow wrestlers are still talking about the horrors of that four decades later. From a fan perspective, it was every bit as scary to see him lug the beast to ringside, and the snake worked perfectly in tandem with his mustached look, which always involved raw intensity and unhinged promos. Also, a special shoutout needs to go to Roberts for the storyline he did with Rick Martel where he was blinded by perfume and wore white contact lenses to look blind. It terrified me as a child.
Mick Foley
I struggled with whether to use Mankind or Dude Love or Cactus Jack here, but I suppose you can’t talk about Mick Foley without celebrating all three. And all three are worthy of being celebrated, as Foley played the roles simultaneously in the late 90s and early 2000s and gave each their own personality and get-up. Mankind was far and away the most popular, as he wore a mask, hung out in boiler rooms and shoved his fingers down his opponents' throats to make them submit. The whole look was like something out of a horror movie, and it led to a ton of fun cinematic matches with strange conditions.
Kane
Another over-the-top character that got his start in the late 1990s, Kane immediately jumped to the top of the card when he showed up as The Undertaker’s long last brother, who was previously burned in a fire. Kane eventually took off the mask and started talking, but his most iconic look is vividly remembered today. It involved a red and black bodysuit with one exposed arm, long hair and a really creepy mask. His entrances always involved fire, and it’s only fitting that his most iconic win against a prime Stone Cold Steve Austin, came after he literally vowed to set himself on fire if he lost.
George The Animal Steele
When I was a kid, I legitimately thought George The Animal Steele had mental problems. Unlike most wrestlers who got rid of their body hair, he rocked a full sweater of fur and often had a tongue that looked discolored and wrong. Sometimes he would pull the stuffing out of turnbuckles and put it in his mouth. Altogether, it gave the impression of someone you didn’t know whether to run from or feel sorry for. Years later, I now see it for what it was, a memorable act that allowed him to work with some of the most famous wrestlers ever, including very prominently Macho Man Randy Savage in a feud where he got infatuated with Savage’s wife Miss Elizabeth.
Scott Steiner
Big Poppa Pump called himself a genetic freak and looked like his muscles were going to explode. He also sometimes wore chainmail armor, once brought a live tiger to the ring with him and did the Hulk Hogan thing where he’d sometimes bleach his hair and beard blonde except for a smaller part he’d keep black. He’s sometimes underappreciated because he was one of the faces of WCW when everything went wrong, but that was hardly his fault and there’s a reason he still gets a huge pop every time he shows up on WWE TV.
Gangrel
I almost went with the entire Brood here, adding in Edge and Christian who all looked quite scary and vampiric during their heyday, but let’s be honest about Gangrel just being on another level. He may have been, by far, the least successful inside the ring, but he was clearly the most successful at coming off like a vampire. I bought a Gangrel action figure like a year ago, and it came with a blood chalice. Fun fact: he was married to Luna Vachon for a long time, who is also on this list.
Dusty Rhodes
I struggled with whether to put Dusty Rhodes on this list because he had a lot of different looks during his forty-plus-year career as a wrestler and booker. He’s not one of those guys who wore the same outfit from day one, but the entire visual look of him in WWE in the late 1980s and early 1990s is so iconic that it has to be recognized here. At the time, he was rocking curly blonde/ white hair and thanks to Vince McMahon, wore a black singlet with absolutely gigantic yellow polka dots. Given his age and size, the look was pretty ridiculous, and WWE fans remember it so well that when Seth Rollins fought Cody Rhodes and showed up in polka dots, fans immediately got the reference.
The Shockmaster
In the early 1990s, WWE mainstay and former tag team champion Typhoon went over to WCW. The bookers reportedly planned to push him as a big, intimidating new character who wore a mask, but they didn’t put enough thought into his costume and had to throw one together at the last minute. The result was bedazzling out a Storm Trooper helmet that he couldn’t see out of, which caused him to trip during his debut promo. It was so funny and went so badly that WCW had to rebrand him as a comedic side character. Decades later, old heads still love to talk about him, as the whole look is so bad it's actually good.
Giant Gonzalez
During the early 1990s, WWE was looking for someone who could believably enter into a long-term feud with The Undertaker. They ultimately settled on the eight-foot-tall El Gigante and signed him away from WCW. They decided to rebrand him as Giant Gonzalez, but unfortunately, his costume didn’t exactly live up to his name. For some reason, he was put in a full-body suit that was painted to look like he was naked and featured fur over his nether regions. Fans weren’t able to take him seriously because of the costume choice, but I had to put him on this list because most fans watching at the time could still describe his look in vivid detail.
Alexa Bliss
Alexa Bliss had a nice enough look during her early rise in WWE, but it was within the realm of what most female wrestlers look like. Once she started working extensively with Bray Wyatt, however, her costuming choices took a hard right turn into the strange. More often than not, it involved pulling her hair up into buns or pigtails with some splashes of pink, rocking heavy black eye makeup and sometimes bringing her favorite doll Lilly to the ring, who may have been the most terrifying part of it all. Spooky.
Sherri Martel
Sensational Sherri wrestled alongside and managed a ton of famous names during her extensive wrestling career including very memorable stints with Macho Man Randy Savage, Harlem Heat and Shawn Michaels. More often than not, she’d completely adapt her look to pair perfectly with whoever she was escorting to the ring. My personal favorite was always when she got really aggressive with the make-up and face paint. Sometimes she’d come out looking like an art project, but it was always in the name of furthering the storyline.
Jushin Thunder Liger
I know I said I was going to mostly keep this list to WWE guys, but the Japanese legend is in the WWE Hall of Fame, wrestled a few matches for the company and spent extensive time in WCW in the 1990s, in between his historic career in Asia. He also looks too good to keep off a list like this. I mean look at that mask. There’s a long history of colorful and eye-catching masks from Luchadors and others, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything that pops quite as much as what Thunder used to rock.
Cowboy Brock Lesnar
Throughout much of Brock Lesnar’s career, he mostly let Paul Heyman do the talking for him, but after the Wise Man turned on him at the 2022 Royal Rumble, he started speaking for himself. What followed was some of the best work of Lesnar’s career and included a steady stream of outfits that typically involved a cowboy hat and some kind of flannel. Ultimately, it culminated in one of WWE’s coolest ever moments where he lifted up the ring with a tractor at SummerSlam 2022. As a shorthand for this period, fans will refer to him as Cowboy Brock Lesnar.
Asuka
The great thing about Asuka’s look is the sheer number of accessories she has in her arsenal. Her make-up is always really elaborate and on-point. Her outfits are vibrant and really interesting to look at. She has fantastic robes, and sometimes she even rocks really cool masks over her make-up on the way to the ring. It’s a treat for the eyes and a very different vibe than what you get from most other wrestlers.
Jesse The Body Ventura
The future Governor of Minnesota was a talent in the ring, but is, at least these days, mostly remembered as one of the greatest announcers ever. His chemistry with Gorilla Monsoon was especially on point, as were his outfits which were always flamboyant and way way way over the top. Typically they involved some kind of headwear and a flashy top, sometimes a suit in an odd color. I mean just look at that hat.
Brother Love
Played by longtime wrestling producer Bruce Prichard, Brother Love made infrequent appearances in WWE, especially in the late 1980s. He was stylized to be a knock-off of an over-the-top TV televangelist, and Prichard’s commitment to the character included painting his face to make it seem an unnatural orange-ish red color. He’d also always wear a really tacky suit, glasses and speak in an over-the-top voice that was an obvious put-on.
Demon Finn Bálor
I love a wrestler who can access a different part of their personality during the right circumstances. Think Hulk Hogan Hulking Up and shaking off all the damage for a short period of time. Finn Bálor’s Hulking Up is his Demon persona. He’s busted it out over the years for big matches, and every single time, the make-up work and overall look is a marvel to behold. I can’t wait to see it again.
