WWE Star Details How He Created The Original ROH Logo

Prior to Ring of Honor holding their first event - The Era of Honor Begins - back in 2002, the promotion needed a logo. Instead of hiring a graphic designer, though, ROH ran a contest where the winner would be awarded five free pro wrestling tapes.

WWE star Joaquin Wilde confirmed back in 2021 that he won the contest as a 15-year-old and he detailed how he came to design the original ROH logo on the latest episode of Out of Character with Ryan Satin.

"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.' Back in those days, this was when tape trading, VHS tapes, were a thing. I was very much a tape trader when I was a teenager. I'm like, 'Five free tapes. That's $100 worth of tapes and they're masters. I can trade these masters for like two or three dubs each. I can get a lot of tapes for this,'" Wilde began.

"My brother was interested in graphic design at a super young age. 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. He spent his birthday money on Photoshop. We're talking 2001. It's just so strange. It's like, what 12-year-old takes their birthday money and buys Photoshop? It's funny because that's his humble beginnings. Now my brother is a graphic designer for the NBA. He has big clients. He just did something for Future, the rapper. He's doing big stuff now, but his start was, yeah, age 12, Photoshop, just playing around making graphics," he continued.

"So when the Ring of Honor opportunity happened, I went to my brother and I said, 'You have to make this logo. We got to win these tapes.' So my brother made a logo. Then just to give myself another chance at winning, I was like, 'Alright, I'm gonna make one too.' I was not as good at Photoshop as he was, but I was okay. So I made the logo. I came up with a little slogan, 'We don't imitate, we innovate.' 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 endeavour, I got the five free tapes and then I got free tickets to any Ring of Honor show that I wanted."

Ring of Honor would use the logo designed by Wilde until 2004 when the promotion introduced their iconic slanted logo. 

Joaquin Wilde is currently on the main roster in WWE as part of the Latino World Order with Rey Mysterio, Santos Escobar, Cruz Del Toro, and Zelina Vega.

H/T to WrestlingNews.co