WWE/NJPW News: Hideo Itami pays tribute to Katsuyori Shibata during WWE's live tour in Japan

What’s the story?

During a recent WWE Live event in Japan, 205 Live Superstar and former NXT star Hideo Itami decided to pay a touching tribute to a certain Japanese Pro Wrestling legend, Katsuyori Shibata, a man with whom the former has a lot of history with.

In case you didn’t know...

Katsuyori Shibata, and Hideo Itami—then billed as Kenta—initially started working alongside each other for top Japanese promotion Pro Wrestling NOAH, under a tag team labelled as The Takeover.

The dynamic duo was definitely one of the hardest hitting tag teams of all time, who liked to follow the Strong Style Wrestling mantra and eventually also challenged for the GHC Tag Team Championships (the Heavyweight version tag teams of NOAH) during their stint with NOAH.

The heart of the matter

Since suffering a devastating subdural hematoma injury in his IWGP Heavyweight Championship match against Kazuchika Okada in 2017, ‘The Wrestler’ Katsuyori Shibata announced his semi-retirement from professional wrestling and hasn’t competed in the squared circle in well over a year.

Following his gruesome injury, several top pro wrestlers from around the globe showered praise on Shibata, with one of them being his former partner Hideo Itami aka Kenta, who recently paid tribute to his former NOAH teammate during a SmackDown Live Event.

As noted, during the recent WWE house show at the Ryogoku in Tokyo, Japan, Itami sat cross-legged inside the ring during an on-going match and replicated Shibata’s signature pose. This eventually led to a huge Shibata chant in the arena, as the crowd in the arena reacted brilliantly to Itami’s tribute.

ヒデオのこのポーズには一部から柴田コールが #WWETokyo #wwe_jp #njpw pic.twitter.com/baQ6HHrhUf

— @awesome_WM34 (@awesome_WM34) June 30, 2018

What’s next?

Katsuyori Shibata is currently working as the head coach of NJPW’s LA Dojo. Itami, on the other hand, is currently working under WWE’s 205 Live brand.