John Wall came into the league in 2010 with no tattoos and a handful of media soundbites about how he doesn't plan on adding any. In 2013, when Wall began sharing images of his first tattoos on social media, there was a minor backlash from critics who thought it made him a hypocrite. Today, Wall is one of the most heavily tattooed players in the league.
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Wall shared the photo above to his instagram account in February 2019, showing a portrait of his mother, Frances Pulley, tattooed on the back of his neck. Pulley was battling breast cancer at the time, which ultimately took her life in December 2019.
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Wall has the name "MIYAH" tattooed on his wrist in tribute to Miyah Telemaque-Nelson, who died from pediatric cancer at the age of six. Wall befriended Miyah in March of 2013, 21 months before her tragic death. In 2018, he posted a video to his instagram page, showing the tattoo alongside the hashtag #ForeverMyLilBuddy.
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In the summer of 2017, John Wall posted the above photo to his instagram account, showing new tattoos of Tupac Shakur and Lil Wayne. The image of Shakur is taken from the footage of him leaving the New York state Supreme Court building in 1994 and the image of Wayne is from the cover of his 2008 album, The Carter III. In the caption for the instagram post, Wall wrote: "Tupac , Baby wayne, Wolf Wall .....All these tattoo define my up bringing thru music and who I am !!"
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Also during the summer of 2017, John Wall shared an image of his new Mario Brothers inspired tattoo via an Instagram story (and preserved by ESPN's Alysha Tsuji).
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Also during the summer of 2017, Candace Buckner of the Washington Post shared this photo of Wall's back tattoo. In the caption, she explained Wall added the Black Power fist two days earlier while staying in Richmond. This tattoo sits below his "GREAT WALL" tattoo, added in 2013, and adjacent to portraits of Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jackie Robinson.
John Wall posted this photo on his twitter account in July 2014. As noted in the caption, the new work includes an image of Wall and his father. In 2010, just before the start of Wall’s rookie year, a Washington Post article discussed the player’s relationship with his father, who died when Wall was only eight years old. The article concluded with a note that Wall planned on avoiding tattoos for marketing reasons, but if he were to get one, it would be in tribute to his father. It's sweet to see this idea fulfilled.
