MOTW 136: KENTA vs Shane Haste
"M.O.T.W. #136: KENTA vs. Shane Haste" - ink & digital illustration
Today brings us to the 136th edition of our Chris Things Art 'Match of the Week' illustration series! And this week we travel to the wonderful world of early 2010s Pro Wrestling NOAH for top-tier green ring deep cut classic world title match between two of my favs.
This fantastic match took place on September 7th, 2013 on Day 1 of NOAH's fantastically-named "Shiny Navigation 2013 Ark New Chapter ~Memorable Pro-Wrestling~" at the long-time home of the company, Differ Ariake in Tokyo, Japan.
So I remember this era of NOAH well; an era of downloading everything I could find linked from the great forums of Puroresu nerd-dom (often in very questionable quality & spread out over many rapidshare links). But I loved it so much! This was my favourite kind of wrestling. And I remember this match just totally rocking! So given the big rematch coming up, you can imagine how stoked I was to see NOAH share this one this week on their YouTube in pristine quality!
KENTA in his prime, finally in the heavyweight main event scene as GHC Champion was such a beautiful thing. And man, as an Aussie, Shane was a guy I was just so proud of at the time; just on a totally killer run in the company. TMDK's tag work was some of the best in the world at the time but man, re-watching this, Shane was already such an awesome singles wrestler!
Everything about this rocks & is such a quintessentially NOAH Heavyweight title match. Slow build but man, the escalation up to the big hard-hitting moments is just so beautiful to see!
Artist's Note: As always I tired my best to capture that glorious, nostalgic green mat as best I could. I also wanted to include a little nod to long-time NOAH senior ref, Shu Nishinaga. I always felt like Nishinaga-San added something special to these big matches!
So stoked for Shane's big win recently! All aboard the good ship NOAH!! Give this a watch before the big rematch! HIGHLY recommended!
ENJOY!!
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