His grandmother, Grace, gave him strength and support before she passed away and so Wyland, a mixed martial arts fighter, decided to pay tribute by having her name tattooed on his forearm where every opponent could see it.
But it did not turn out the way he wanted it to.
From one angle, the whole name is backwards and from another, it is upside down and mismatched.
It’s a mistake he says that is very hard to erase.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if it was something else, I guess,” Wyland says. “It’d still be really bad, but for my grandma’s name, that’s the worst.”
Wyland says it all started when he went shopping for a tattoo in Oregon City and ran into a family acquaintance, tattoo artist James Langholz. Langholz had just gotten his license about a week before and offered a huge discount. Wyland would get his tattoo for about $40. He had expected to pay at least $100 more.
Wyland said Langholz’s sketch looked fine.
“(It) said my grandma’s name, ‘Grace,’ in cursive,” he says.
But the tattoo is in an awkward spot on his arm and when Langholz put the sketch on him Wyland couldn’t see what it actually said.
Wyland says he did not know there was a problem until he showed his new body art to a friend later that night.
“I was just completely embarrassed,” he says.
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