Joaquin Wilde began training for professional wrestling 20 years ago, but a year prior, he etched his name in wrestling history.
At 15-years-old, Joaquin Wilde (real name Michael Paris) entered a contest to create the logo for a new start-up promotion. Evidently, Wilde ended up winning, and his artwork was then featured as the official logo for two years. That company, of course, turned out to be Ring of Honor.
During a recent appearance on Out of Character with Ryan Satin, Wilde told the story of how it all unfolded. “So, Ring of Honor, they put up a thing on the Internet saying ‘Design the Ring of Honor logo and win five free wrestling tapes.’ 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 2 or 3 dubs each.’ I’m like, ‘I could 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, because 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, 2002. It’s just so strange. It’s like what 12-year-old takes their birthday money and buys Photoshop in 2001? This doesn’t happen.”
“And now it’s funny because that’s his humble beginnings. Now, my brother’s a graphic designer for the NBA. He does all this other big clients. He just did something for Future the rapper. He’s doing big stuff now. But his start was, age 12 Photoshop, just playing around making graphics. 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 like another chance at winning, I was like, ‘All right, I’m going to 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 endeavor. I got the five free tapes. Then, I got free tickets to any Ring of Honor show that I wanted. I guess even now, if I wanted tickets to a show, I could probably [get them]. So yeah, it was pretty cool. Pretty cool opportunity.”
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