To show how well respected he was in wrestling, CMLL even acknowledged his passing during their weekly big Friday show tonight and they are pretty much the last "don't mention anyone outside the company unless they are doing something for us" place left in the world.
Also as Mike Sempervive pointed out, people like to talk about having to deal with villainous old school wrestling promoters and Inoki was out there making deals with Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-Il. It really can't be understated that he not only had the idea to do a dome show in North Korea, the mf'er actually made it happen. That's fucking insane.
Not only is he easily in the top five of most important figures in pro wrestling history, as mentioned before the fight with Ali was essentially the first promoted MMA event ever. You can draw a direct line from that event to the MMA boom in Japan and then to UFC as we know it.