The Art of Wrestling – Smackdown’s Men Part II

After doing some more viewing this past week, the men’s side will be a three part series.  I may break the women up by the individual since they all change close to weekly.  Let’s start this series with the King of Kings.

HHH – He always wears his most recently designed t-shirt to the ring.   HHH’s in ring garb starts with his white taped wrists with his right hand being covered.  He wears black elbow and knee pads.  His black boots have the HHH Iron Cross.  HHH sports black tights have a white thin lined iron cross that has a skull in the middle of a circle on both the front and back.  The HHH Iron Cross has been around for a while and is a decent design but the tights seem a little too cluttered with the skull in the middle.  If they separated the designs with one on the front and the other on the back.

The Big Show– Shockingly, he wears a single strap singlet that mimics Andre The Giant’s garb.  Even if it’s obvious, the parallels will always be there because of both athlete’s size so there is no reason to dodge the comparison.  It’s basic black which is nice and simple, just like this review.

Victor Kozlov– The “Moscow Mauler” has a basic look too.  He wears black boots, elbow and knee pads.  He also sports white trunks.  When a Russian character is portrayed, I’m always a little surprised that he isn’t wearing red with a yellow hammer and sicklelike Boris Zhukov or Nikolai Volkoff.  Because they taut him as Sambo champion, they could have given him a ring jacket called a kurtka, a belt and shorts and Sambo boots called sambovki.  Read more about Sambo and their attire here.  With Kozlov’s demeanor, his outfit works so I won’t argue with the fact that it is basic.

Shelton Benjamin– From the bottom up, he has gold on the front and back of his boots with black on the sides, soles and laces.  Shelton has gold tights with a white design with black trim on the left hip and a black design with white trim on the right hip.  The bottom of the short leg has a thin black and white band that overlines the word “Gold” in black letters on the right thigh and “Standard” on the left thigh.  He also has black knee pads and elbow pads.  The “Gold Standard” lives up to his nickname with his outfit.  If they’d only let him grow out that poorly dyed hair, he’d look even better.

Montel Vontatious Porter– He wears a black body suit with legs that almost come down to his knee braces which are also black.  There is a thick purple stripe running down the center of each sleeve.  “Protect This Ring” is in black in the stripe on the left sleeve.  The purple stripe runs down MVP’s ribs and to his legs where it is cut off by a thin purple horizontal stripe slightly above the cut off the shorts.  On his back are three ovals in purple with a letter M, V and P from top to bottom.  The size of the ovals and letters decreases as they go down.  MVP has black boots with a purple lower case m that has a white star above the stem of the m.  Last week, MVP wore almost the same exact outfit with the color changing from purple to a candy apple metallic red.  This look is so much better than his earlier looks.  The candy apple metallic red is better because it creates more contrast and gives him a flashier look which is appropriate for the “King of Bling”.

R-Truth – He wears white button down shirt unbuttoned to the ring that has a double T with a spray paint look on the back.  R-Truth wears light black jeans with a white spray paint R-Truth on both legs and his left back pocket is white.  He has a black belt with a regular silver square belt buckle and white belt loops.  R-Truth wears a necklace that is comprised of silver beads.  He wears white and dark blue sneakers.  R-Truth has electrical tape above his biceps and around his wrist with a black glove and elbow pad on his right arm.  The outfit works for him but it’s a little confusing why the back of his shirt isn’t and R and T.  The spray paint lettering helps drive home his hard upbringing.

Kenny Dykstra– Kenny wears black biker shorts with a yellow and white design on the bottom of the thigh on both legs.  Both of his wrists and his right fist are taped in black cloth tape.  His boots are short and black.  Kenny’s outfit is almost as poor as the WWE’s decision to have Jesse and Festus ship him off last week.

Super Crazy – He wears a black body suit that doesn’t have arms but has full legs.  Crazy has an Aztec design (this is similar) that is red and green with a white outline.  The Mexican colored and Aztec themes fit into his heritage because the city he grew up in Tulancingo Hidalgo was part of the Aztec Empire which ruled large parts of Central America from approximately 1325-1421.

That’s a wrap for the single’s division with some updates ready to come over the weekend or early next week.  If you want to take a better look at some of the outfits, go to WWE.com and peruse some of the pictures in their Photos areas of these characters.

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