During a WWE angle in 2010, CM Punk planned to come out on SmackDown, wearing a t-shirt announcing, “I Broke Big Show’s Hand.”
Punk contacted his close friend at the time and fellow Chicagoan, Colt Cabana, who knew about Ryan Barkan’s One Hour Tees shop in the City of Big Shoulders. Barkan cranked the shirt out quickly, impressing Cabana so much that he offered to cut a deal with the proprietor. In exchange for a discount for a batch of “I ✡ Colt” gimmicks to sell on the indies, Cabana would hype the t-shirt and Barkan’s business on his popular podcast.
Initially, Barkan wasn’t sure if the arrangement would work for him. “I wasn’t a huge fan of the independent scene,” Barkan said. “My brother was a Ring of Honor fan and filled me in” on this untapped market.
Very quickly, Barkan realized that there was a whole aspect of the wrestling business that he’d never thought about before. The WWE machine might have been serving the merchandising needs of John Cena, The Miz and the Undertaker, but what about the guys who were running with Cabana? Through Colt’s intercession, indie stars like Joey Ryan and the Young Bucks began ordering t-shirts from Barkan in bulk.
In many ways, the success of the Bucks as a commercial entity mirrored the success of the company that would become known as Pro Wrestling Tees.
Back in 2009, the brothers had signed a deal with TNA, where they were originally labeled Generation Me and rechristened Max and Jeremy Buck. But they soon concluded that they’d made a mistake. TNA split up the Bucks and programmed them to feud with each other. Few fans were interested, and apparently neither was TNA management. At a certain point, the company ran out of ideas for them, and the pair sat around for weeks at a stretch, earning nothing.
Before departing TNA in 2011, Matt Jackson remembered passing through an airport and attempting to buy a quick meal at Popeye’s. When his credit card was declined, he asked Nick to dip into his pocket and purchase the $1.99 chicken biscuit sandwich.
Matt’s wife, Dana, was pregnant at the time, and he knew that his life could no longer continue in this direction. For a moment, he considered getting a straight job. But the Bucks weren’t ready to quit wrestling. “I actually had to be the guy to say, ‘Hey, Matt, there’s a reason why we’re doing this,’” Nick told CBS’ Miami affiliate. “I just had a gut feeling. I’m glad that we stuck with it.”
As the brothers surveyed the indie scene, they focused on Colt Cabana. He’d had some of the same lousy breaks they did — playing a forgettable character, named Scotty Goldman and based on Cabana’s Jewish heritage, in WWE in 2008 and 2009 — yet he managed to hold his head above water. As they examined his situation further, they realized that the difference between Cabana and the Bucks was that Colt made a concerted effort to promote himself via social media and merchandising.
In time, the Bucks followed the exact same pattern, setting their wrestling price low enough that they could work three or four times a week. On the road, they tried tapping into the level of excitement they felt in PWG, arguably their favorite promotion, and passing it on to the spectators, regardless of the location. They became such a draw that the 2CW promotion in upstate Oswego, New York, named one event, “We Booked This Show Because It Was Literally The Only Available Date For The Young Bucks.”
Before and after each card, they’d set up at the merch table, spending one-on-one time with the fans and promoting the hell out of their t-shirts. Many times, those same fans would return to the next show, remember their pleasant exchanges and line up to buy something else.
“Selling merchandise and superkicking people,” Nick Jackson joked to USA Today. “That’s pretty much everything about us.”
As she raised their family, Matt’s wife, Dana, took on the task of managing the team’s merchandising empire. Ultimately, the Bucks would hawk more than 80 varieties of t-shirts on Pro Wrestling Tees’ website. Like Cabana before them, the Jackson brothers inspired other indie performers to earn a better living by taking the small stuff seriously. “They’re the first people who opened up my eyes to seeing, ‘Oh, you can be successful outside of WWE,’” Joey Ryan told Vice Sports. “‘You can make a full-time living in wrestling without WWE. You can have a career in wrestling without WWE.’”
By 2013, following the format set by the Bucks, Kevin Steen, Christopher Daniels and Jimmy Jacobs were all working with Pro Wrestling Tees, which sold their merchandise online and shipped it around the world. After production and other costs, the company and the performers shared approximately a 50-50 split.
In time, a number of wrestlers told Barkan, they could earn enough from t-shirt sales to pay their essential bills.
Aware that his reputation was building, Barkan attempted to associate larger names with his business. When he discovered that a number of wrestling legends would be appearing at a comic convention, he created a specific design for Diamond Dallas Page, who was just starting his DDP Yoga program. Impressed, Page turned Barkan on to Jake “The Snake” Roberts, a DDPY student who’d credit the regimen with helping him treat his substance abuse issues.
“I started getting credibility with the legends,” Barkan said. After meeting WWE Hall of Fame announcer Jim “J.R.” Ross through Twitter, Barkan found himself introduced to “Stone Cold” Steve Austin in 2014.
“Steve was my favorite wrestler of all time,” Barkan explained. “Growing up, I had his posters all over my wall. When we finally spoke on the phone, I was sweating. I sent him four shirts that he didn’t like. So I sent a higher quality t-shirt, and he said, ‘Let’s do it.’”
Once Barkan had the ability to drop Austin’s name to potential clients, Pro Wrestling Tees was instilled with authority not just on the indies, but everywhere in professional wrestling.
On a Tuesday in 2018, Teddy Hart contacted Pro Wrestling Tees, asking for 50 shirts to be shipped to his hotel room in California. In Australia, Cody glanced at his stock and realized that he was a hundred gimmicks short. “They don’t realize what they need until they get somewhere and see that they’re out of t-shirts,” Barkan said.
With the exception of Bullet Club shirts, which Barkan said “sold like crazy,” Pro Wrestling Tees housed very little inventory. But the items could be instantly printed.
“Gone are the days when you had to have a huge stock of merchandise with one design that you had to gamble on because you weren’t sure if people would love it or hate it,” Matt Jackson told me. “So you give the people an option. Customize it. What color do you want? Put it on a tank top. I put together a team of artists I trusted. I implemented my own ideas. And we came up with merchandise we respected. And that’s why it sold.”
Barkan estimated that the entire process, from the moment of contact until the wrestler received his merchandise, took a total of four days. “We print them and ship the next day, all colors, all sizes, all designs. There are 80,000 possibilities.”
Interestingly, before his immersion into the indie scene, Barkan maintained that he’d pitched his on-demand idea to WWE. “We would have been able to print t-shirts for every member of their roster, but they didn’t want to do it. I don’t think they remember that. In fact, I’m not sure the guy I spoke to is even with the company anymore. But Pro Wrestling Tees wouldn’t have happened if WWE had said yes.”
Instead, New Japan signed a deal with the company as the Bullet Club heated up. Due largely to the faction’s popularity, Pro Wrestling Tees more than doubled the size of its staff and made arrangements with the Hot Topic chain to stock Bullet Club shirts in malls all over the United States.
“There were Bullet Club shirts for AJ Styles, Bullet Club shirts for Tama Tonga, over 50 Bullet Club shirts,” Barkan said. “It was a cool-looking shirt: just white ink on a black background, a simple design, like the nWo or Austin 3:16 shirts. Except you never had 50 different nWo t-shirts.”
Noted Omaha promoter Chris Metry, “I see people wearing Bullet Club shirts in the mall and sometimes wonder if they even know what it is.”
Hot Topic executives apparently also spotted the trend. According to one story, when WWE was approached about working with the retail chain, the wrestling giant had to concede that it had no connection to the Bullet Club. Either way, Pro Wrestling Tees sold 200,000 Bullet shirts within five years. “If you add in all the other indie shirts, that’s 600,000 shirts in the same period,” Barkan said.
The same year that the Hot Topic deal was signed, Pro Wrestling Tees created its own store next to its print shop in Chicago, a place for traveling fans to stop while passing through the city. “The fans will order a shirt, and we print while they wait,” Barkan said.
As their acclaim spread, certain Bullet Club members and legends like Mick Foley, Road Warrior Animal, and Jake “The Snake” Roberts also made the effort to check out the facility. “CM Punk comes by once a month to pick up his [royalty] check,” Barkan said.
By 2018, Pro Wrestling Tees was working with 1,200 different wrestlers and 300 different promotions. “In every city, there’s one independent wrestling company,” Barkan said. “I know because I do business with all of them.”
Of Pro Wrestling Tees’ 35 employees, approximately 30 were fans. “We’re not just a business printing shirts,” Barkan said. “Since we’re wrestling fans, we know what wrestling fans like. We have our own little focus groups in the shop, where we throw around ideas and talk about angles we watched on wrestling — what worked, what didn’t work. I could be wrong, but I’d guess that the people printing the NFL’s t-shirts don’t enjoy the same level of intimacy.”