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Pro Wrestling Noah had one of their biggest shows of the year “Spring Mayhem” in Ryogoku Sumo Hall on May 2.
The main event saw Shane Haste defeat Yoshiki Inamura of NXT fame to become the third foreigner to hold the GHC Heavyweight Championship.
It’s been an up and down career for Haste, who first made a name with Mikey Nichols as TMDK (The Mighty Don’t Kneel) in Noah in the early-to-mid-2010s. They left for NXT in 2016, but weren’t successful.
Nichols left WWE and Haste had a brief main roster run as Shane Thorne and as part of the masked Retribution gimmick during the pandemic and was eventually released. He and Nichols reformed TMDK in NJPW and held the IWGP Tag Titles and expanded the TMDK group with Zack Sabre Jr. becoming the front man. He stopped getting booked in NJPW a little over a year ago and has been roaming the wrestling landscape since then.
I saw him live back in February on an AEW show in Ontario, Calif. He was part of the losing side of a six-man match against Scorpio Sky and Top Flight. That’s quite the career turnaround going from losing on ROH events to winning the GHC Title in the main event of Sumo Hall within a couple months. Top matches on the show saw:
•Ozawa pinned Tetsuya Naito with a backslide. Ozawa is similar to Naito from a decade ago. He’s the charismatic cool heel who is really a babyface to the fans. Naito hasn’t looked that good since joining Noah, but he was fine here. This was the most anticipated match coming in as it’s the closest thing to a dream match Noah can put on right now. The match was just okay, but had good heat.
•Dragon Bane won the GHC Jr. Heavyweight Title from Amakusa. Bane now holds the Junior tag and singles titles. He’s a luchador who came to Noah with his brother Alpha Wolf as a tag team. They were really good before Alpha turned heel to join the Team 2000 X heel stable that Ozawa is the leader of. Amakusa is a really good veteran wrestler that doesn’t get much talk. This was my favorite match on the show.
ARTICLE CONTINUED BELOW…
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•Shane Haste beat Yoshiki Inamura in a match that went 31 minutes. Inamura won the title in November of last year from Kenta when he returned from his NXT excursion. He now wears a cowboy hat and calls himself “Mr. Smack Daddy.” It was a pretty good match, but didn’t have that much heat as I don’t think many fans thought Haste could win.
After the match, Haste challenged Kenta for a match noting his only previous GHC Title match was a loss to Kenta in 2013. Haste did an emotional interview backstage taking about how it was his dream to be GHC Champion since first seeing Noah in the early 2000s when Kenta Kobashi was the champion.
He said he gave up on that dream. He thought when he left Noah the first time that he was moving on to bigger and better things. But things went downhill and it broke him as a person.
But winning the GHC Title validated him and thanked everyone who ever supported him. This was the type of interview that makes you like Haste and want to get behind him as a good person and sympathetic figure. The Japanese style backstage interview is a good avenue for this type of promo. It’s just the winner speaking from the heart straight into the camera with no scripts or interviewer holding a mic and asking questions.
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