Welcome, welcome to Noah: the story of the first Global Heavyweight Championship
Usually on a Saturday the young boys father took the kids to the local video store, and the boy ran excitedly inside. Usually he liked to choose anime, perhaps an adventure film, but today he had something different in mind. He was going to go with wrestling, and so while his father looked for a suitable film for he and his wife to watch when the kids were in bed, he browsed the sports aisle.
After a while, his father called him, and he grabbed a video and ran back with it. Glancing at the cover as he ran to the counter and handed the box to his father, he noticed that the tape was a few years old.
"Puroresu?" his father asked him in surprise. The boy had never really shown much interest in sports before.
"I saw some at a friends house".
At home, the boy put the cassette into the VHS player and pressed play. The tape whirred and the screen sprung to life.
He sat back to watch.
The video was from a promotion called Pro-Wrestling Noah (he hadn't heard of it before), and it contained clips from a tournament to crown the first Global Heavyweight Champion (abbreviated to GHC). The final came down to two men, Yoshihiro Takayama and Mitsuharu Misawa, and the match was shown in full.
Yoshihiro Takayama came out first. He wore a t-shirt that was acceptable in the early 2000s, (but no promotion would dare touch seventeen years later), which read "if it has wheels or a skirt..."
The Differ Ariake arena was full of flashing laser lights and smoke machine which belched a cloud of white smoke. The athletes descended from the heights of the arena as if they were immortals descending from their holy mountain, and the affect was stunning.
Then the lights darkened, the arena was flooded green and Yoshihiro Takayama's opponent appeared.
Back in the All Japan days, Mitsuharu Misawa had hated "running the gauntlet" through the crowd, and while he didn't have to do that exactly here, people still reached out to touch him as he passed.
Each man was accompanied by two younger (or junior) men who would "second" him. Normally these men were trainees, but sometimes they could be established wrestlers in their own right, who they handed their ring robes or t-shirts to. An old man read the match terms, and a younger man in a suit and with slicked back hair, announced the competitors.
The two men faced each other across the ring. History was about to be made, both in the ring on two counts as it happened, as we will see later.
The first ever GHC Heavyweight Championship match took place om 15th April 2001 at Noah's home of Differ Ariake. Noah was young, its birth had been a time of uncertainty as its father wasn't sure how he was going to provide for his family, but he need not have worried, the pantry was well stocked as the fans flocked to the arena and sold out every seat.
Before the match Joe Higuchi presented the GHC Heavyweight Championship to both competitors, Yoshihiro Takayama laid his hand on it, and Mitsuharu Misawa gave it a nod of the head. The belt was thus baptized as Joe Higuchi held it up high as was traditional for the audience to see in all four corners of the arena, and the match began, Yoshihiro Takayama towering over Mitsuharu Misawa, and naturally because of his size he was able to get the upper hand when they locked up and went through the usual submission and test of strength moves. To today's eyes the match would be classed as "classic", and newer viewers of Puro would probably find it somewhat old fashioned compared to today's product of fast moves from the outset, but this was how it was done back then.
The match was built and a story was told with the larger and stronger wrestler, attempting to wear down the smaller wrestler.
It didn't work and the match went to trading blows, vicious elbows, at one point Takayama threw Misawa onto the announcers table, he slammed him hard onto the walkway, neither man would submit to each other, neither man would give up no matter what the other gave out.
The crowd were on fire, Misawa bled, he followed it up with elbows. The men appeared superhuman, neither would stay down, the audio picking up the sound of the blows above the screams of the crowd.
In the end, the match was won by Mitsuharu Misawa, who became the first ever GHC Heavyweight Champion, and the belt was wrapped around him by his trainee\second, who would one day hold the belt too and endure similarly enduring matches as the one he had just witnessed, Naomichi Marufuji.
As Misawa left, he raised his arms on the stairway and confetti shot out over the crowd on cue.
The boy had watched just as spellbound as the audience, his heart beating in his chest. These people couldn't be real, could they? No. He didn't think they could be. No human person could endure such punishment. The man in green, Mitsuharu Misawa, was certainly his favorite. He had stood up to that big guy and won the title. He was a hero, and he would always see him that way.
The Noah that Kaito Kiyomiya would know was a very different place to that which he had seen when he entered the dojo in 2015. His hero had sadly passed away in 2009, the "Golden Era" which he had grown up watching was over, the era of the stadiums was over, and Noah were in a dark period thanks to the scandal involving organised crime, (which had been facilitated by the sharply dressed ring announcer he had seen as a child); but although Misawa might have gone, his spirit remained, and it would remain with anyone who wore the GHC Heavyweight belt.
The match that day, seventeen years ago between Mitsuharu Misawa and Yoshihiro Takayama was a birth, and not only of the GHC Heavyweight belt. As much as Mitsuharu Misawa, Naomichi Marufuji and Takashi Sugiura are considered symbols of Noah, the belt is too, and it set in motion a chain of events for the future. The match (although he did not watch it live and many years after it had happened) inspired young, unlikely, Kaito Kiyomiya to become a Noah wrestler, and through him it would also embody the spirit of Misawa vs Kawada when he and Kenoh (another man who had not known Misawa), clashed, it would inspire Kenoh to lead Noah into a new era, it would inspire Noah to pull back from the dark times by putting it on Eddie Edwards (who was the first gaijin to hold it), and in turn it would lead to Kenoh, and in turn the belt, who the little boy had watched the birth of, would lead back to Kiyomiya one day.
When the belt was born on that day in April, with it was Noah's future.
After a while, his father called him, and he grabbed a video and ran back with it. Glancing at the cover as he ran to the counter and handed the box to his father, he noticed that the tape was a few years old.
"Puroresu?" his father asked him in surprise. The boy had never really shown much interest in sports before.
"I saw some at a friends house".
At home, the boy put the cassette into the VHS player and pressed play. The tape whirred and the screen sprung to life.
He sat back to watch.
The video was from a promotion called Pro-Wrestling Noah (he hadn't heard of it before), and it contained clips from a tournament to crown the first Global Heavyweight Champion (abbreviated to GHC). The final came down to two men, Yoshihiro Takayama and Mitsuharu Misawa, and the match was shown in full.
Yoshihiro Takayama came out first. He wore a t-shirt that was acceptable in the early 2000s, (but no promotion would dare touch seventeen years later), which read "if it has wheels or a skirt..."
The Differ Ariake arena was full of flashing laser lights and smoke machine which belched a cloud of white smoke. The athletes descended from the heights of the arena as if they were immortals descending from their holy mountain, and the affect was stunning.
Then the lights darkened, the arena was flooded green and Yoshihiro Takayama's opponent appeared.
Back in the All Japan days, Mitsuharu Misawa had hated "running the gauntlet" through the crowd, and while he didn't have to do that exactly here, people still reached out to touch him as he passed.
Each man was accompanied by two younger (or junior) men who would "second" him. Normally these men were trainees, but sometimes they could be established wrestlers in their own right, who they handed their ring robes or t-shirts to. An old man read the match terms, and a younger man in a suit and with slicked back hair, announced the competitors.
The two men faced each other across the ring. History was about to be made, both in the ring on two counts as it happened, as we will see later.
The first ever GHC Heavyweight Championship match took place om 15th April 2001 at Noah's home of Differ Ariake. Noah was young, its birth had been a time of uncertainty as its father wasn't sure how he was going to provide for his family, but he need not have worried, the pantry was well stocked as the fans flocked to the arena and sold out every seat.
Before the match Joe Higuchi presented the GHC Heavyweight Championship to both competitors, Yoshihiro Takayama laid his hand on it, and Mitsuharu Misawa gave it a nod of the head. The belt was thus baptized as Joe Higuchi held it up high as was traditional for the audience to see in all four corners of the arena, and the match began, Yoshihiro Takayama towering over Mitsuharu Misawa, and naturally because of his size he was able to get the upper hand when they locked up and went through the usual submission and test of strength moves. To today's eyes the match would be classed as "classic", and newer viewers of Puro would probably find it somewhat old fashioned compared to today's product of fast moves from the outset, but this was how it was done back then.
The match was built and a story was told with the larger and stronger wrestler, attempting to wear down the smaller wrestler.
It didn't work and the match went to trading blows, vicious elbows, at one point Takayama threw Misawa onto the announcers table, he slammed him hard onto the walkway, neither man would submit to each other, neither man would give up no matter what the other gave out.
The crowd were on fire, Misawa bled, he followed it up with elbows. The men appeared superhuman, neither would stay down, the audio picking up the sound of the blows above the screams of the crowd.
In the end, the match was won by Mitsuharu Misawa, who became the first ever GHC Heavyweight Champion, and the belt was wrapped around him by his trainee\second, who would one day hold the belt too and endure similarly enduring matches as the one he had just witnessed, Naomichi Marufuji.
As Misawa left, he raised his arms on the stairway and confetti shot out over the crowd on cue.
The boy had watched just as spellbound as the audience, his heart beating in his chest. These people couldn't be real, could they? No. He didn't think they could be. No human person could endure such punishment. The man in green, Mitsuharu Misawa, was certainly his favorite. He had stood up to that big guy and won the title. He was a hero, and he would always see him that way.
The Noah that Kaito Kiyomiya would know was a very different place to that which he had seen when he entered the dojo in 2015. His hero had sadly passed away in 2009, the "Golden Era" which he had grown up watching was over, the era of the stadiums was over, and Noah were in a dark period thanks to the scandal involving organised crime, (which had been facilitated by the sharply dressed ring announcer he had seen as a child); but although Misawa might have gone, his spirit remained, and it would remain with anyone who wore the GHC Heavyweight belt.
The match that day, seventeen years ago between Mitsuharu Misawa and Yoshihiro Takayama was a birth, and not only of the GHC Heavyweight belt. As much as Mitsuharu Misawa, Naomichi Marufuji and Takashi Sugiura are considered symbols of Noah, the belt is too, and it set in motion a chain of events for the future. The match (although he did not watch it live and many years after it had happened) inspired young, unlikely, Kaito Kiyomiya to become a Noah wrestler, and through him it would also embody the spirit of Misawa vs Kawada when he and Kenoh (another man who had not known Misawa), clashed, it would inspire Kenoh to lead Noah into a new era, it would inspire Noah to pull back from the dark times by putting it on Eddie Edwards (who was the first gaijin to hold it), and in turn it would lead to Kenoh, and in turn the belt, who the little boy had watched the birth of, would lead back to Kiyomiya one day.
When the belt was born on that day in April, with it was Noah's future.
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