I recently got ahold of a few more ECW TV title belts and decided to make another Ready 2 Rumble World Champ belt. While I was happy with the way the first one came out, I had to make some sacrifices in the design in order for it to fit on the ECW Heavyweight title belt's odd mushroom shaped plate. So it was something of a compromise and now I had to chance to redo the belt the way I originally envisioned it.

Unlike the first belt design, this one was a walk in the park to work on, primarily because I was able to take the vector objects I had already made in the earlier version and reuse them here, specifically the flag ribbon, "World Champ" titling, ancient world map and Ready 2 Rumble logo. This allowed me to concentrate on the major element I had to sacrifice in the first belt; the flag circle. The WBC Belt (which I was making fun of) had a main plate with an elliptical shape, with flags of the world circling its outer edge. I couldn't do the flag circle in the first belt because of the main plate's irregular shape. But since the ECW TV title belt had a circular plate, I was able add a flag circle to main plate design. Compared to the other design elements, this was a relatively easy exercise, and the hardest part was deciding which flags to use; I looked for flags with designs that would lend to the overall gaudiness of the main plate design, particularly flags that had a lot of red, blue and green.

While there aren't as many flags in my design's flag circle as there are in the WBC Belt, I did make sure that I retained the WBC Belt's infamous faux pas. Apparently the designers of the WBC Belt got a little carried away when they used flags on their belt design, because among the flags in the flag circle are those of Sweden and Norway. Both countries have long banned professional boxing and are, therefore, not members of any of professional boxing's "world" governing bodies. Granted that these countries may have been members before they outlawed the sport within their borders, the most current WBC Belt designs continue to have the flags of Sweden and Norway on their main plate. So to pay homage to this blunder, I have included the flag of Norway in my belt's flag circle.

Spending less time working on the main plate allowed me to put more emphasis on the designs for the side plates. In the first belt, I spent so much time working on the main plate design that I got a little impatient and rushed the designs on the side plates. This time I was able to put more thought into these plates. Again, I looked at the WBC belt and found that they use images of past champions. I originally wanted to use images of a couple fighters in the game (specifically, Butcher Brown and Afro Thunder), but I was unable to find suitable images. After a little digging through the Net, I found a couple of images of my favorite former Heavyweight Champs (George Foreman and Muhammad Ali) and used them on the designs of the side plates. While not as appropriate as Butcher and Afro for a Ready 2 Rumble title belt, the images of  Big George and The Greatest look really good on the side plates and add a sense of "legitimacy" to the belt.

The finished belt design is an even better rip-off of the WBC Belt than the first one was, and true boxing fans will recognize its pedigree right away. I still wish I could have used images of Ready 2 Rumble fighters in the side plates, though. I sent an email to Midway technical support asking them if they could provide some high resolution images of the fighters. If they're nice enough to grant the request, I may just modify this belt in the future!

Here are some images of the finished belt: