Ruby Soho’s tattoos mix big portraits, flowers, delicate pattern work and little flashes of color. The neck pieces tend to grab your eye first, but there’s plenty going on farther down: a packed right arm, a harlequin on her left forearm, an ornamental hand design and a bright hot-air balloon on her thigh. Her collection has room for both a soft flower and a skull-faced woman. That mix is a big part of its appeal.
If you remember her as Ruby Riott in WWE, you’re looking at the same wrestler. Before that, she wrestled as Heidi Lovelace. The names changed, and so did her hair and gear, but the tattoos give you a way to follow her look across those different years. Don’t assume that a piece missing from one picture has disappeared. Hair, sleeves, wrist tape and the cut of a top can hide a surprising amount.
Music runs through the collection, too. Her first tattoo was musical notation for What a Wonderful World, a song her father sang to her when she was little. Later, a Less Than Jake cover became the starting point for a forearm portrait. Those are two very different sounds, but both have a place in her story. You don’t need to know every band she likes to enjoy the designs. Here’s a closer look at five areas where the shapes, placement and small details are especially easy to pick out.
Medusa and the portraits around her neck
The Medusa neck tattoo is one of Ruby’s most talked-about pieces. She’s explained that the design relates to her unease about time passing, with tiny clocks in Medusa’s eyes turning the idea of freezing people into a thought about freezing time. It’s a personal take on a familiar myth. It isn’t a reason to assign the same meaning to every Medusa tattoo you see on somebody else.
The neck work doesn’t sit there like a small badge. The portraits follow the sides of her neck, with shaded shapes moving toward the front and small bird silhouettes adding dark accents beneath her chin. Her hair can cover one side while leaving the other open. That’s why a straight-on picture and a side view can make the area look quite different, even when they’re showing the same collection.
In this photo, you can also see how the neck pieces meet the upper edge of her chest tattoo. The chest design has an oval, scalloped frame around a woman with a skull-like face and swept hair. The frame gives it the feel of an old cameo. It has a neat border, while the work above it is more flowing. That change in outline helps the two areas stay readable instead of turning into one dark patch.
The mix of a human face, hair, snakes and little silhouettes makes this area worth a second look. From farther away you notice the dark shapes beneath her jaw. Closer up, the faces and individual lines start to separate. The effect depends on where you’re standing, which is part of what makes a large neck collection so different from a single tiny symbol behind an ear.
Flowers, feathers and lettering on her right arm
Ruby’s right arm is much denser than her left upper arm. Flowers lead the sleeve, with a sunflower near the shoulder, a pale blossom beside it and more petals lower down. The shapes overlap and wrap around the arm, so you can’t take in the whole arrangement from one angle. The rounded shoulder flower and the longer feather shapes beneath it make a useful place to start.
There’s color here, but it doesn’t overwhelm the outlines. The sunflower has warm yellow petals, while the larger flower farther down the arm has softer green and pink tones. Black and gray shading fills the spaces around them. You get a lively sleeve without every part competing to be the brightest thing in the picture. The green hair and plaid gear add their own color outside the tattoo itself.
Lettering curves around one of the upper-arm flowers rather than sitting in a separate straight line. Lower down, a butterfly and a broad flower on the forearm change the scale again. Small dots and soft shaded areas connect the larger subjects. It feels like a collection of pieces that can share the same arm, with enough changes in shape to keep your eye moving.
It’s tempting to give each flower a neat one-word meaning, but Ruby hasn’t supplied a full explanation for every petal. The sleeve is interesting without that extra guesswork. Look at the contrast between the dark feather shapes and the lighter flowers, or the way a wide bloom sits above a narrower part of the arm. Those are details you can actually see. They also explain why the sleeve still looks organized when several designs are visible together.
The Less Than Jake harlequin on her left forearm
The woman on Ruby’s left forearm is a music reference with a specific starting point. WWE identified it in August 2018 as a tattoo based on the cover art for Less Than Jake’s She’s Gonna Break Soon. Artist Amber Olsen made the piece. The design features a female harlequin with a single tear, giving this part of her collection a different mood from the flowers on the opposite arm.
The harlequin’s face sits toward the elbow end of the forearm, with the costume details continuing down toward the wrist. Her large eyes and tilted head are easy to pick out. The softer shading around the face contrasts with the darker shapes beside it. There’s also a small red accent lower in the arrangement, so the portrait doesn’t rely entirely on black and gray.
That position lets Ruby show the portrait by turning her forearm outward. In a crossed-arm pose, it can become partly hidden or appear sideways. Here, the open angle gives the face more room. It’s a good reminder that arm tattoos move with the person. A design that looks narrow from one view may wrap much farther around the skin than you first expect.
The same photo shows the ornamental owl on the side of her abdomen. Its eyes sit inside layered, pointed shapes that spread outward like petals. The owl and the harlequin don’t have matching subjects, but their strong facial features make a nice visual comparison: one is built from repeating outlines, while the other uses the softer shading of a human portrait. Ruby leaves a fair amount of skin open between the stomach pieces and her chest, which helps each larger design stand on its own.
The ornamental tattoo across the back of her hand
Ruby’s right hand resting beside her hip gives a clear look at another side of the collection. The hand tattoo uses repeating curves and petals instead of a large face or a colored flower. A rounded center spreads into small scalloped shapes, with darker lines adding an outer edge. The pattern covers much of the back of the hand and continues toward the wrist.
At first glance, the lines can seem very busy. Follow them from the middle outward and the arrangement becomes easier to understand. There are little teardrop shapes, curved bands and rows of short marks. The pattern has a lace-like feel, but the black outlines are firm enough to stand apart from the skin. It’s a much more compact arrangement than the broad shading in her sleeve.
The fingers carry smaller marks of their own. They don’t all repeat the central hand pattern, so the back of the hand and the fingers read as related areas with different jobs. The large design gives you one main shape; the little finger pieces add details around its edge. The outer border remains easy to follow as she bends her fingers around the edge of her shorts.
Her sleeve, hand and neck are all visible together here. Even though they sit close to each other, they use different kinds of lines. The sleeve has soft petals and shaded feathers, the hand has tight ornamental curves, and the neck has larger flowing shapes. That variety gives the collection texture. You can enjoy how those parts fit together without treating every small line as a symbol with a fixed definition.
The hot-air balloon and smaller thigh tattoos
The hot-air balloon on Ruby’s left thigh is a colorful change from the mostly black and gray portraits above it. Its rounded envelope is divided into panels, with a small basket hanging below. Green, red and yellow tones make it stand out against the skin. The balloon is the main shape in this part of her leg, but it isn’t the only thing to look at.
Above it are a flower, a hanging ornamental shape and small dark star-like accents. Other pieces continue along the sides of the thigh, outside the clearest part of this view. Rather than one large scene filling the whole leg, you see separate subjects gathered around a larger centerpiece. The gaps help keep the balloon’s outline easy to follow.
Her ring gear matters to how much of this area you can see. In this studio look, the shorts leave her left thigh open while the longer trouser leg covers more of the other side. That shifts your attention down to the leg. In another outfit, the opposite can happen. The tattoo collection hasn’t suddenly changed just because a different part becomes the most obvious feature.
There’s also a useful contrast between the tattoo and the skull patch on her shorts. The patch belongs to the clothes; the balloon and flowers sit on the skin below them. They’re part of the same overall look, but they’re separate things. The warm colors in the balloon soften the harder black leather, chains and studs around it. That balance is one reason Ruby’s tattoos work so well with her punk styling.
A few quick questions
How many tattoos does Ruby Soho have? There isn’t a dependable current total. In a 2018 interview, she estimated about 26 and noted that some pieces blend together. Treat that as a count from that time, rather than a number you can confidently apply to every later photo. A sleeve also makes counting tricky: one person might count the whole area, while another counts each flower, portrait and bit of lettering separately.
Does she have a Riott Squad tattoo? Yes. WWE reported in October 2018 that Ruby, Liv Morgan and Sarah Logan had matching tattoos of the date 11/21/17, marking their SmackDown debut together. It’s a smaller friendship piece among her larger designs. The date has a clear connection to the group, so there’s no need to turn it into a mystery or guess at a different event.
Did her look influence other wrestlers? Rhea Ripley has said that seeing Ruby’s tattoos and short hair helped her feel more comfortable showing her own style. If that connection interests you, Rhea Ripley’s tattoos offer another look at how a wrestler builds a distinctive collection. Ruby’s own mix stays easy to recognize: portraits up high, flowers through the arm, detailed hand work and bright individual pieces farther down.
For more of Ruby in her own words, this AEW Unrestricted conversation covers her arrival in AEW, her connection with Rancid and the stories behind her wrestling journey.