Awesome / Pro Wrestling NOAH

• For its primary belt, the GHC (Global Honored Crown) Heavyweight Championship, there are two or three CMOAs: The first being when Kenta Kobashi (by pinning the company president and "ace") went on a two-year, career-and-belt-defining reign, and when Naomichi Marufuji became the first man to win every championship (except the Great Happy Christmas joke belt) in NOAH by pinning Jun Akiyama... with a pumphandle small package, no less. In a company with "signature move power levels," he chose a "cheap flash pin" as the subject of his most unbeatable move.
• Kenta Kobashi vs. Kensuke Sasaki at Destiny, 18 July 2005. An incredible match on its own but the cake goes to the damn near 5-minute pure CHOP fest the two engage in, not giving an inch. Kobashi wins the chop battle but ends up collapsing along with Sasaki.
• On March 2 2008, there was a tag title match where The Briscoe Brothers went to perform their (springboard) Doomsday Device, only for defending champion Naomichi Marufuji to literally catch Mark Briscoe (performing the clothesline) in midair, backflip off of Jay Briscoe (holding him up), and cushion his fall with Mark Briscoe — countering a signature move of the Briscoes with a higher level one of his own. Worse yet, in kayfabe Jay Briscoe didn't realize what happened (a testament to how fluid the counter was) and thus thinking that Mark was pinning Marufuji, Jay actually counted along with the ref and crowd.
• Kenta Kobashi beat cancer. (Technically a kidney tumor, but.)
  • Only to then end his 2008 run before the year was up, due to an arm injury. Considering its stale booking, a questionable choice of its two GHC Heavyweight Championship reigns in 2008 (basically hot-shotting it from Mitsuharu Misawa finally to Takeshi Morishima, and then to Kensuke Sasaki soon after), NOAH's CMOA will be if it survives 2009.
    • Unfortunately, it only pulled that off by making its first roster cuts in years.
• The promotion's rebirth in general. Following Mitsuharu Misawa's death it entered into a long and seemingly irreversible decline that saw NOAH go from being one of the major Japanese promotions to something on the level of other indies. Even a working relationship with NJPW couldn't help it. When Lidet bought the company and rebranded with a new logo and dropping the green in favor of a white, black and red color scheme it looked like a last gasp to save the promotion. To everyone's surprise though it worked as investing in younger wrestlers like Kaito Kiyomiya and Kenoh started to lead to increased attendance and long time veterans like Katsuhiko Nakajima and Go Shiozaki seemed to finally start living up to their potential. Shiozaki's GHC Heavyweight Championship reign was seen as one of the best in wrestling in 2020 and they even announced plans to run the famed Budokan in 2021. Along the way they were purchased by CyberAgent, owners of DDT Pro Wrestling and one of the largest media companies in Japan. They're still below some of the bigger companies but they're now in a seemingly much better and much healthier place than they've been since Misawa's death.

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