Joaquin Wilde was the designer of the classic Ring of Honor logo and accomplished the feat when he was just fifteen years old.
During an appearance on the “Out Of Character” podcast, Wilde recalled submitting a design for the ROH logo as part of a contest to win five free wrestling tapes in 2002.
Out of all the submissions, ROH eventually selected Wilde’s design and used the logo for a long period of time after.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On designing the logo: “So Ring of Honor, they put up a thing on the internet saying like, ‘Design the Ring of Honor logo and win five free wrestling tapes!’ And back in these days, this was when tape trading and VHS tapes were a thing. I was very much a tape trader when I was a teenager. And I’m like, ‘Five free tapes? That’s $100 worth of tapes! And they’re masters? I could trade these masters for like two or three dubs each!’ I’m like, ‘I can get a lot of tapes for this!’ And the thing was, my brother — it’s so funny now, my brother was interested in graphic design at a super young age. ‘Cause I was 14 or 15 when this Ring of Honor thing happened, so my brother would have been 12 or 13. He had already purchased Photoshop for himself at age 12, like he spent his birthday money on PhotoShop… now it’s funny, because that’s his humble beginnings now. My brother’s a graphic designer for the NBA…
“So when the Ring of Honor opportunity happened, I went to my brother and I said, ‘You have to make this logo, we gotta win these tapes.’ So my brother made a logo. And then, just to give myself like another chance at winning, I was like, ‘All right, I’m gonna make one too.’ And I was not as good at Photoshop as he was, but I was okay. So I made the logo, I came up a little slogan. ‘We don’t imitate, we innovate.’
On winning the contest: “We sent both logos to the contest. And would you believe it? I won. The one time that I beat my brother in some artistic endeavor. I got the five free tapes, and then I got free tickets to like any Ring of Honor show that I wanted for…ever, I guess. Even now, if I wanted tickets to a show I could probably [go].”
On being interviewed in front of the logo years later: “It’s funny, in that documentary, that Slammed documentary, it’s a Ring of Honor tryout. And I remember, there’s one part where they’re interviewing me. And you see the logo in the background. And I just think to myself now, it’s like, ‘That’s so funny.’”
