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I'd suggest buying some cheap cloth kick-pads and grabbing some kickpad covers from elucha.com; you'll get a pretty good look for under $50.

Regarding kickpads from elucha.com, I've owned two pairs: the ones I have now, which are pretty good but they don't sell anymore, and a pair of their typical solid black kickpads that had the fabric tear pretty easily (when I lent them to someone else! So they could have easily just been careless with them), but anyway, it's a small enough investment to try out the covers and the cheap cloth kickpads because you can always use the covers later - I used the cloth kickpads for about a year when I was working once a week (9 or so years ago) and they are durable as hell especially for the price.

Like Giraffasauras_Rexis said, you should take functionality into it as well - I use kickpads occasionally, but it's purely aesthetic as I never kick with my shin, so people watching carefully might find it a nonsensical choice on my part. Lately I've been preferring just my boots, and I'm pretty sure I have the same pair of costume boots you're talking about :D

Just order a custom singlet from high spots and put '0' in the "thigh" category for a legless singlet. About 70$ for a high quality singlet that will last you a long time with good care; after that, as I've put in another thread, I'm a big fan of the Brute gear you can get off of Amazon - Delaney, Lawler, etc. also wear trunks over their tights and singlet:

• Trunks
  
• Tights
  
  Should be able to grab it all for a little over $100. Hope that helps.

Ten Pounds of Gold

The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling

I'd also recommend as many biographies as you can, whether they're WWE brand or unauthorized or whatever. There's really no such thing as "the whole truth" in professional wrestling, at least not regarding history and certainly not regarding stories with two or more people. You just have to piece together both accounts and kind of "find" the truth.
So I'd get ahold of books like Bret Hart's book, Freddie Blassie's, William Regal's, and Eric Bischoff's. Those will cover a lot of history from many federations. I just read Daniel Bryan's book and it's much more recent but I'd throw that one in there as well. Although I haven't read them, Terry Funk's, Harley Race's, Dusty Rhodes', and Ric Flair's books would be great in this aspect as well.

Clear Gear Sports Spray 24 Ounce Bottle - Disinfect, Clean and Deodorize Sports and Protective Gear and Eliminate the Funk https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BMLJOLM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_VqEPzbAK12VD2

For lighting: I bought a ring light with tripod for $30 bucks or so. It was a good investment as you can get really dramatic promos with very little effort.

Fall Guys is the oldest book I know of that talks about wrestling and kayfabe. Only five bucks for the ebook version.