「キングオブマンガプロレス」： 茂野 吾郎
KING OF MANGA PRO-WRESTLING: GORO SHIGENO

This is Goro Shigeno. He is dressed as professional wrestling legend Mitsuharu Misawa.

I hope you will like it. I would appreciate your feedback for this drawing.

Extra Notes:
In honor of the upcoming sequel of the manga series "MAJOR" this March, I've decided to come up with a King of Manga Pro-Wrestling tribute to the long-running baseball comic series.

For this piece, I decided to draw Goro Shigeno once again as the late, great Mitsuharu Misawa. I first drew him as Misawa a few months ago, and the parallels between him and Misawa continue to amaze me to this day. I never thought that their similarities would go beyond the green uniform tights.

Like I said in the past, both Shigeno and Misawa are very passionate about their respective sports that they are willing to put their lives on the line for it. For Shigeno, this led to an injury that would eventually be detrimental for his Major League career. And sadly for Misawa, it eventually led to his tragic death in the wrestling ring. With the upcoming MAJOR 2nd (the sequel to MAJOR), I honestly hope that Goro wouldn't suffer that same fate as Misawa.

Because I had modeled Goro as Misawa, I decided to use this as a springboard for my Mayumura/Akiyama and Sato/Kobashi crossover fan art, since the three of them were the godfathers of Pro Wrestling NOAH. From there, I was able to come up with a new fictional wrestling promotion called Pro Wrestling MAJOR, which is more or less a parody of NOAH. (I even liked how the parody logo came out.) But since Akiyama and Kobashi are no longer with NOAH, I decided to limit the parody on this Shigeno/Misawa fan art instead.

I do hope to expand this further into a Manga Pro-Wrestling issue, but it remains to be seen what I can actually do at this point. After all, the new sequel MAJOR 2nd did note that Goro's son is the new hero of the series, so it kinda dampened my mood for an upcoming match involving any of these three. But hey, maybe I'll get motivated in the future.

I hope you'll enjoy this piece.