Antonio Inoki

[strobogo]

Big match spectacle Inoki with a capable opponent is awesome. Inoki doing stunt show bullshit with guys who were barely even trained in pro wrestling can suck hard, especially if you've seen enough where the novelty has worn off. I would say this goes for the entirety of his career, from the earliest JWA stuff all the way up to the 1996/1997.

[Phil Schneider]

My memory of Inoki from the NJ 80s set process, is that he would have a lot of singles matches, where he would have his opponents hit some offense for a bit and then he would just stop selling and clean their clock, without any real transition or story. It was a pretty bad match formula and it happened a lot, to the point if you saw Inoki not in a big match you would know exactly how the match was going to go. His big match performances were really good, I loved the Fujiwara series for example, but day to day it was tough. In many ways he is similar to DiBiase in the Mid-South set, where you had some all time classics at the high end, and painfully dull stuff outside of that.

[Clayton Jones]

I will say as someone who just watched the sets and voted, I enjoyed DiBiase's matches on average much more than Inoki's, and it's unlikely either makes my GWE ballot.

[KinchStalker]

11 hours ago, Phil Schneider said:

My memory of Inoki from the NJ 80s set process, is that he would have a lot of singles matches, where he would have his opponents hit some offense for a bit and then he would just stop selling and clean their clock, without any real transition or story. It was a pretty bad match formula and it happened a lot, to the point if you saw Inoki not in a big match you would know exactly how the match was going to go.

I've been watching some '77 NJPW off and on, and I've seen this formula rear its ugly head all the way back then. The NWF title defenses against Johnny Powers and Stan Hansen are very much in this vein, with his opponent in control on the mat for much of it until Inoki gets a few good shots in for a pinfall.

[strobogo]

Matches off the top of my head that I'd recommend 

 

Inoki vs Brisco JWA: UN Title match from 1971. This is in the AJ Archive and imo is probably the direct inspiration for the original UWF. 

Inoki vs Dory Jr. JWA: NWA Championship. I want to say there were 2 in the AJ Archive, both hour long draws, but both real good.

Inoki/Baba vs Funks JWA: There were multiple in the Archive, watch all of them.

Inoki vs The Destroyer JWA: Also in the Archive, I'd recommend but it's not the classic that you'd get from Destroyer/Baba.

All Inoki vs Andre matches on NJ World

Inoki vs Rolland Bock on NJ World. Bock just absolutely manhandles Inoki and it's wonderful.

Inoki/Sakaguchi vs Thesz/Gotch: Pretty sure it's on NJ World, if not it's easy to find on line. Lou da gawd also manhandles Inoki and treats him like an absolute scrub.

There's one really great Inoki vs Tiger Jeet Singh match but I can't remember which one it is out of the dozens of trash ones

Inoki vs Dusty 1979 on NJ World, mostly for Dusty being peak weirdo during it

All Inoki vs Backlund matches

Inoki/Backlund vs Hogan/Hansen

Inoki/Fujinami vs Adonis/Murdoch  I believe MSG League 1984 finals

Inoki vs Hase 1992 1/4 

Inoki vs Tenryu 1994 1/4

Inoki vs Muta 5/1/94

Inoki vs Fujiwara 1995

Inoki vs Flair from Collision in Korea

Inoki vs Vader 1996 1/4

Inoki vs Tiger King

[ohtani's jacket]

My general rule of thumb for Inoki is that that match ought to be from the 70s and it's better if it's against a native talent. 

[club]

Love Inoki. I love the way he moves about, he has such physical charisma and star power. The idea that he’s the greatest fighter of his generation is ridiculous. Inoki is ridiculous. But he plays it such conviction that I can go with it.

A common criticism reading this thread is that he spends a long time lying about doing nothing, but I can buy into the idea that he’s thinking, strategising how to take down his opponent. It does lead to some dull matches but when it works gives matches an unpredictable sporting feel. He’s a very unique character, the likes of which we may never see again.

[GOTNW]

I keep my pro wrestling watching to a minimum nowadays, but recent unfortunate circumstances have sparked my imagination. I watched two very high singles profile matches:

Antonio Inoki vs Riki Choshu- 1984/8/2

Antonio Inoki vs Masa Saito-1987/4/27

 

Now, first thing's first-both of these matches are excellent and absolutely fantastic, and I would rate *at least* the Choshu match as an all time classic. Several things stood out to me.

Let's start with the finishes, because I think it's really something in which time proved the superiority of Inoki's vision. And vision is absolutely the right term, because he very much defined the house style of New Japan as such. The magic of pro wrestling is created when you are able to suspend your disbelief and immerse yourself in the drama. The prerequisites for that are fairly simple: the work needs to be believable and the story needs to be unpredictable. I'll come back to believability, later, let's focus on the unpredictability for now. How do you achieve predictability? By not being predictable, i.e. not repeating the same thing over and over again. If you watch a high level pro wrestling match these days, there's about a 95% chance it's going to end with the finisher of the winner. Now, special techniques aren't a negative per se. You see them in every combat sport: Boxing, Kickboxing, Muay Thai, Judo, Grappling/BJJ, Amateur Wrestling and so on. But when you basically know the finish, the drama isn't in how it's going to end, but in how you are going to get there. Now-I'm not saying you can't work in that frame and create greatness. But you're limiting your options. Inoki has his specialties, but he always varied his options, and wasn't afraid of doing less and going with a context appropriate alternative instead of just using it as an idea for a set-up of the "default" finish used in everything from a six man to the biggest match of your career.

Believability? I honestly have a much harder time suspending my disbelief for many pro wrestling matches these days. They just look phony, to me, sorry. I prefer watching real combat these days, that's on me. But I was honestly shocked with how good and believable, well....pretty much everything was. Especially the matwork. The key is always in the details. You can see these guys were clearly trained and knew how to grapple for real. Am I necessarily betting on any of them to win an imaginary theoretical 1985 ADCC? No. But it's much easier to suspend my disbelief when I see Choshu snapping Inoki's head down with a nice snapdown into a front headlock, when I see legitimate wrestling rides used. Their transitions and counters make sense: Inoki counters a Straight Footlock by pushing the leg away so his opponent can't lock it in full-on. When him and Choshu are battling for a Scorpion Deathlock there's constant gripfighting, Inoki is using his core to try to prevent Choshu from turning him over. Things look good and make sense. And that's honestly just a start-it's really his incredibly creativity in chaining all those sequences and timing the transitions that make it great pro wrestling work.

And there's the selling. Inoki isn't going to pinball bump like Fuerza Guerrera, Mr. Perfect and friends; but his selling tells a story. He doesn't need to sell much-he's Inoki, why would he sell? The best should less because they are the best. But when he starts selling more expressively, the crowd feels it. It signifies a transition, the pace of the match changes, an opportunity for his rival is created. His facial expressions and body language are absolutely in sync with the narrative he's engaged everyone in the arena with. You can see how this man managed to con people into giving him money despite wasting it time and time again through his illustrious career.

When I put things into context, all things considered, for what I like in wrestling, he's definitely top 5 of all time and a strong candidate for #1 on the '26 vote next to Maeda and Hashimoto.

[brockobama]

Very well said. Don't have it in me now to do the big writeup I think Inoki deserves but in the wake of his passing I've found myself thinking similar thoughts, wishing that the struggle and the emotion at the core of Inoki's work was more widespread today. The last few mockups I've done had the man landing somewhere in the teens and I don't see any reason why that'll change.

[EnviousStupid]

New Japan making dozens of his matches free to watch has seriously made me reconsider my stance on him as a candidate. Most of my criticisms for him aren't really applicable to his 70s material, and that's probably when he was working most of his prime years. He's so great at directing where a match will go and how to maximize key moments in them. A wrestler that could make his style of wrestling look realistic (for the time), and then add highly dramatic elements on top that rarely break the tension that he had been building up. Moreover, the pacing and opponents from that time felt more suited to Inoki's strengths. The matches didn't feel like they went on too long because the variables were malleable enough and individual actions were treated like they held weight in the moment, regardless of whether they wound up playing a factor thereafter. Larger wrestlers like Murdoch and Andre could be imposing threats, but also allow their matches to breathe. It's a big difference between them and the likes of Hansen, Brody, Williams and even Choshu through the 80s, who'll force themselves as well as the action onto their opponents and potentially muddy the vision that someone like Inoki aspires to bring forth. In comparison, there's no such rush with these older matches. Even in a bloody, violent one like he has with Kintaro Oki (10/10/74), you get the classic start-stop approach from Inoki in the early periods, hard-fought grappling that looks legitimate, before the dramatics are brought to the forefront and the heat which had been sustained so far can finally be released for an exciting third act.

I haven't bothered making a rough draft for GWE, but before his passing I would've pegged Inoki somewhere around the bottom half. Now, he's top 25 at least. Maybe I'll write something in the future that covers more ground, but I hope the few things I've put here can compel others to dive into his body of work.

[GOTNW]

After giving it some thought, I’ve decided I’m going with Inoki as #1 on this one.

 

What really pushed me over the edge when I was thinking about the candidates was how magnificent, grandiose and exciting the story of Inoki's career was.  It is a well documented fact in historical anthropology that, for better or worse, stories are a vital part of the human experience, once said humans reached a certain evolutionary point. For better because they facilitated learning, social cohesion and cognitive development. For worse because simplification and fact-manufacturing is unavoidable in storytelling, as you will see in this post. Because the story I’m telling really isn’t the story of Antonio Inoki’s career as it is, but as how I imagine it.

 

Unless some great discoveries (which I’ve missed) have been made in the last couple of years, the earliest footage we have of Inoki is from 1967. I categorize the 1967 - 1971 period of Inoki’s taped career as “early Inoki”.

 

This is the time of the legendary B(aba)-I(noki) Cannon. I wish I had written something more constructive on it at the time I was watching the footage, but to recall and summarize, they were absolutely amazing, and every piece of footage we get is an absolute treasure. The crown jewel of the footage we have is Baba/Inoki vs Valentine/Kiniski (70/12/1), an absolutely phenomenal bout, one of the greatest tag team matches of all time and almost certainly the best taped one from the era. The only legitimate challengers I could even think of are some French Catch bouts.

 

But this is not only the era of Inoki and Baba as a team. This period is particularly important because it shows us how the legend of Inoki started to be created. His grueling brawl with Markoff (69/5/16) is a fantastic match, but even more than that, it is an incredibly strong showing symbolically, as a bloody and battered Inoki fights to overcome a villain. You can see the first step of the myth-creation that would form later. His technical classic with Dory Funk Jr. (69/12/2) might be his most famous bout from the era, and the 1971 Destroyer bout is an incredible anomaly in that it managed to be both a 70s JWres technical classic and a sprint. Not a sprint in the sense that it is a 5 or 10 minute bout, but in the sense that the structure of a 60 minute bout explodes in 20 minutes, which is quite something to behold for the time, and potentially a great gateway for those trying to dip their toes in the timeframe.

 

With all due respect to the matches I’ve listed, and I’d easily rate almost all of them as classics, for my money the best match Inoki had in this time period is his 1971 (5/8) one vs. Jack Brisco. Excellent, excellent grueling amateur-inspired grappling, which managed to push the medium of pro-wrestling forward not by divorcing itself from the fundamentals of the genre, but by rethinking them in a way that was even more truthful to them than much of the work that preceded them.That last point I made is going to be quite important later on, but for now let’s go to what I would categorize as the second period of Inoki’s taped career. 

 

Covering the 1972-1975 period, I would describe it (very creatively I know) as “early New Japan Inoki”. Now, by this point I’ve written too much text which I’m not being paid for, so it’s time to cut to the chase. This is it. Inoki is in his prime, he’s the ace of the promotion, he gets to do what he wants insofar as anyone ever does. This is where you get the bouts vs. Seiji Sakaguchi, Kintaro Oki, Strong Kobayashi, Lou Thesz and so on. And they’re all great, but there’s ultimately a destination to which they lead. And the magnum opus of this era, and maybe very well of Inoki’s career, is the 1975 match vs Billy Robinson. 

 

The third period of Inoki’s taped career (1975-1981)  is, in my head, inherently connected to the Billy Robinson bout. I categorize this period as “early experimental Inoki”. How exactly are they connected? The Billy Robinson bout  is a strong contender for the greatest pro-wrestling match of all time. So, how can you top it? Well, maybe you can’t. Maybe Miles Davis couldn’t top Kind of Blue. It’s hard to top an all-time great work. But if you’re gonna do it, it’s probably not going to come by trying to replicate it. Miles Davis turned to Jazz fusion. Inoki turned to martial arts.

 

And much like In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew didn’t come overnight, neither did Inoki’s next masterworks. Sure, there was plenty of “normal” Inoki in this time period. His series of matches vs Andre The Giant, for example, is a textbook example of how to work a cat-and-mouse grappling match. Except the textbook far exceeds even an University one. Inoki can be the cat as well, which you see in his 1978 bout vs Kantaro Hoshino. There’s some some other good "normal" wrestling here too.

 

But that’s really not the main story of this era. Inoki is flying to Pakistan to hook a local into Double Wristlock in a bout with rounds. Work? Shoot? Who knows? Who cares? Inoki is fighting some German Boxer, ok, I’m in. Roland Bock? Ok. Then you turn around and Inoki is fighting a strongman from the Croatian diaspora? And suddenly you see something inbetween a full on Pancrase and a full on PRIDE bout in a 1977 New Japan ring. We thank The Great Antonio for his sacrifice.

 

Now, maybe Inoki could have had one, two or seven “big time four star matches” instead of doing all of those. But in my head, it’s precisely the artistic and business choice he made that further cements his case. 

 

The fourth period of Inoki’s career I would arbitrarily and imprecisely put at 1982-1988, categorizing it as “mildlife crisis Inoki”. Now, at this point, maybe he’ll dog a house show six man tag. For all I know, he could have been doing the same thing in 1974 as well, it really doesn’t make much difference to me. But this is the era where we get another unbelievable run of classics. Inoki’s matches vs Fujinami, Choshu, and Masa Saito are as good as any of his old time classics, and even more than that, we’re going through a completely revolutionary time in pro-wrestling. Despite going at it for God knows how long, it doesn’t look like Inoki is past the times. In fact, he is often at the forefront of the revolution. Maybe not the shoot-style UWF one (although watching his go at it with the UWF crew, particularly Fujiwara, is a blast), but the big time hybrid matches? The incoming wild brawls? The Masa Saito bouts are just insane. Sometimes insanely excellent, sometimes just insane. When you see a handcuffed Masa Saito getting the blood beaten out of him by a furious Inoki, that is when you see Bitches Brew for Antonio Inoki.

 

Finally, we got to the fifth period of Inoki’s career (1989 - 20??), which I categorize as “old man Inoki”. This is the era where Inoki basically just does whatever he wants, even more so than before. Going over New Japan’s top stars with no problem? Check. Randomly dropping a fall to Kazuo Yamazaki in a tag match? Check. Grappling Renzo Gracie after he’s officially retired? Having top New Japan stars face Cro Cop in a real fight? Punching Lyoto Machida in the face?  Getting into petty family disputes over IGF? The man was just a machine, a constant source of entertainment.

 

And to think he managed to pull all of that in a single lifetime. What can you even say?

[highflyflow]

I watched a good chunk of 60s/70s Inoki footage last month and he's someone I'm strongly considering for the back half of my list, easily one of the best workers of the era from what I've seen. Great matworker and a constantly compelling presence, plus the late career peaks in the 80s and one of my favorite Vader matches ever with the 96 Tokyo Dome bout. It's gonna be hard to weigh him at his best with how bored I could be of him watching 1980 footage on the whole.

[Control21]

Very well said, @GOTNW. Inoki moved up a few places on my ballot over the past few months. He's right outside of the top 10 now. He had a very remarkable in-ring career for the reasons you just laid out. Couldn't have said it better myself.

[Childs]

Inoki went from off my list in 2016 to top 25 this time around. 1) I understand his career better. 2) I value what made him special more than I did a decade ago, when I was overly focused on some selfish, boring performances from the '80s. Bottom line is that if I want to watch a big match worker from the late '60s to the late '80s. not many ahead of him.