I’m pretty sure i mentioned this before, but i’m a big fan of professional wrestling… not as much sports entertainment, but the crazy, high flying, spectacle that is pro wrestling. I lost interest in the mainstream wwe product years ago, though not due to the talent… their athleticism or abilities often don’t factor in to how wwe chooses to push, or book them.
Thankfully, in january 2019 a new promotion rolled out, all elite wrestling, or aew. the ceo, tony khan was a lifelong wrestling fan whose family owned the jacksonville jaguars and the premier league club fulham. he partnered with cody rhodes, and the young bucks (collectively referred to as “the elite”) who had gained notoriety through their “being the elite” youtube show. they had just run the largest independent wrestling show ever, selling out 10,000 seats at the sears center in just under 30 minutes. the newly formed aew found a broadcast partner in tbs/tnt, and started airing weekly shows later that year.
Orange cassidy, who had been wrestling on the independent circuit (mainly for chikara) started wrestling for aew at their premier ppv event “double or nothing”. he was quickly signed to a contract and would become a staple of their weekly shows. what first appeared to be a “gimmick wrestler”, a slacker(loosely based on paul rudd’s character in wet hot american summer) who wouldn’t put any effort into his matches and wrestled a large chunk of them with his hands in his pockets. would become a superstar due to his crazy athleticism and often overlooked understanding of ring psychology. despite outside detractors not understanding the appeal, it quickly became clear that the audience was hooked on his character.
in 2022, after working his way up the card over the past three years, and after high level programs with legends like chris jericho, and stellar matches with just about everyone on the roster…orange cassidy would go on to win his first championship. beating pac for the all atlantic championship (renamed the international championship soon after), he would elevate the title with a run of 31 defenses over 326 days. with a storyline that would see him put through the ringer, sometimes competing multiple times in a week, he eventually lost the title to jon moxley.
For a while i’d wanted to start a new series of illustrations based on aew wrestlers. but with such a stacked roster of talent, where was i to start. feeling inspired by his nearly year long run with the belt, cassidy just felt like the perfect muse. i had some ideas on how to incorporate new (to me) techniques into my style, and the idea of pairing a very work intensive render style with a slacker aesthetic felt like a real interesting challenge. seeing the way it turned out, i’m glad i did. outside of some final color tweaks in photoshop, this entire piece was done by hand in clip studio paint. as you can see from the close ups below, i added layers of hatching, and cross hatching to my original shading method. this gave it a looser, kinetic feeling than before.
what do you think? i’d love to hear your thoughts.
