Antonio Inoki

[ohtani's jacket]

I've been watching some Inoki matches from the 70s and it's been interesting to say the least. I watched a 1979 match against Bob Roop that was a bit too grinding when it came to the matwork and featured a lot of BS with the outside manager, but that was close to the 1980 cutoff where I think it ought to be expected that he's not that great. The Destroyer bout from '71 was disappointing but thatwas a pretty average performance from Beyers. Watching Inoki try to have a scientific title match with Ernie Ladd was interesting. I'm not sure how much of a success it was, but it was interesting. He had a neat catchweight bout with Hoshino in the late 70s and I thought his match with Sakaguchi in '74 was good. I don't think he was ever a "super worker," but he was far from a dead weight. The simple answer is that he was Inoki, but I think that means something different in the West than in Japan.

[El McKell]

Watching Inoki try to have a scientific title match with Ernie Ladd was interesting. I'm not sure how much of a success it was, but it was interesting.

If that's the match from the US that's on Youtube, it's really horrible.

[ohtani's jacket]

It's the one from Ohio and I saw it on YouTube, so yes and yes.

[ohtani's jacket]

I really liked the Robinson/Inoki match. If I'd made a list, I would have put serious consideration into voting for Inoki in the lower half of the ballot. He simply had too many good matches from 1969-75 to ignore. And it wasn't a case that he was in there with the best talent of his day. I genuinely believe he added something tangible to the bouts through his presence and his fundamental knowledge of holds. I don't think he was ever truly great, but I sat through three broadways and didn't get bored which has to count for something.

[ohtani's jacket]

I got a kick out of watching Inoki wrestle a potbellied Akram Pahalwan under the rounds system in 1976. Worth it alone to see the fashions Pakistani gentlemen were wearing in the 1970s and the subtle heeling from Inoki's camp.

[ohtani's jacket]

The Gotch footage jumps around a bit. Looks like something went wrong with the conversion as it's sped up. Pretty cool bout. Inoki's never going to be a popular worker around these parts, but I think if you're judging him on the 80s set then it's a bit like judging Flair on his 90s work. That 80s stuff really ought to be seen as post-prime footage where every decent match is a bonus ala Fujinami in the 90s. Post-coup at any rate. He's not a very theatrical or dramatic worker, and his matches get weaker when he has to work that style, and he's not the most pure technician either, but he has a distinct brand of charisma and a singular focus to strong style that makes him interesting to watch. And even though he's not wildly expressive when he cocks that fist you know he means business.

[JerryvonKramer]

I ranked him primarily on his 1970s work.

[Childs]

I'm generally a fan of his '70s work as well, but for me, the '80s Inoki vs. '90s Fujinami comparison doesn't quite work because Inoki remained the dominant figure in the promotion for so much of his decline phase. And aging ace was not a role he wore well, especially if viewed week to week. I take your point, and it's something I might think about in more detail when/if we do this again. But I'm not comfortable dismissing the '80s as a minor part of his biography. The '90s? Sure. But not the '80s.

[JerryvonKramer]

I'm generally a fan of his '70s work as well, but for me, the '80s Inoki vs. '90s Fujinami comparison doesn't quite work because Inoki remained the dominant figure in the promotion for so much of his decline phase. And aging ace was not a role he wore well, especially if viewed week to week. I take your point, and it's something I might think about in more detail when/if we do this again. But I'm not comfortable dismissing the '80s as a minor part of his biography. The '90s? Sure. But not the '80s.

How do you see the comparison to Baba in the 80s?

[Childs]

I found Baba much more graceful in stepping back to his secondary legend role. He wasn't as good an athlete as Inoki, but he accepted his limitations and remained effective in modest doses. To be fair, Inoki's 2/6/86 match with Fujiwara was better than anything Baba did in the decade.

[ohtani's jacket]

Things were so messy and political in New Japan that it's hard for me to judge his work from the point of view of an aging ace stepping back and letting a heir take over. Whether he jumped to the UWF or not, he was still going to be the top star of a thin roster. It's not a defense of him because the situation was a result of his own politicking and fraudulent business activities, but I have a hard time judging his work against the smooth transition of Baba to Jumbo. To me that's more an issue of booking and infighting and backstage politics.

 

From what I've seen thus far, Inoki began declining physically as the 80s loomed and moreover the type of worker coming out of America and Europe had changed dramatically. Not only that but the roughhouse style had been popularised by that stage. I mean I'd rather watch Pat Roach vs. Inoki than Brody vs. Inoki but the scene had changed.

[JerryvonKramer]

OJ, is there a difference in your view between the NWA style of matwork you've said before that you don't care for and Inoki's style? Can you talk through it?

[fxnj]

I don't get the hate for his 80's work at all. He was in a lot of the top matches of the DVDVR and always looked like he could hang just fine with whoever he was in with. Even the stuff I've seen that didn't make the set like the match with Abdullah was still awesome largely because he had such great charisma in the ace role and such a great connection with the crowd.

[ohtani's jacket]

OJ, is there a difference in your view between the NWA style of matwork you've said before that you don't care for and Inoki's style? Can you talk through it?

 

I think there's more of a catch-as-catch-can influence to Inoki's matwork whereas the NWA style is more about grinding away at a hold and wearing your man down. I don't think anyone is going to confuse Inoki with the great catch exponents, but I generally find the catch style to have a greater display of speed and skill than the NWA stuff.

[ohtani's jacket]

Whoa, I watched the Roland Bock bout from '82 and Bock wouldn't give him anything. I wish I could find their '78 bout from Stuttgart which is even more notorious. Bock had such an amazingly scummy look for a shooter. West German sleaze at its finest. Incredibly shitty match, but I was curious to see how it would finish.

[JerryvonKramer]

Has anyone ever watched his matches against Johnny Powers?

 

I find Powers a fascinating, curious and more or less forgotten figure in wresting history.

[ohtani's jacket]

The 7/78 bout with Backlund is another excellent Inoki match. Backlund was pretty fantastic in it. He does that weird thing where he sticks his ass out and looks like a duck, but aside from that I thought his selling performance was nuanced and rather good. Tons of fantastic action and work. Definitely in the running for best Inoki match ever.

[Childs]

I cannot watch that match without falling asleep. I don't know if it's great or not, because I've never seen more than 15 minutes of it.

[ohtani's jacket]

I listened to a strange mix of Yarbrough & Peoples, Merle Haggard and REO Speedwagon while watching it.

[JerryvonKramer]

He does that weird thing where he sticks his ass out and looks like a duck

 

He does that every match!

 

I do feel loathe to watch that match considering how boring I found their bouts in 1980, but I think I might have to. Kelly, ready the Leaping Lanny machine!

[ohtani's jacket]

I don't think I'll be in a hurry to watch another Inoki worked shoot after the Karl Mildenberger fight. Nothing interesting about that fight whatsoever.

 

The Brisco match from May '79 is okay, but I think the magic was gone from Brisco by that stage and Inoki didn't look great either.

[Parties]

There's about ten minutes of Inoki-Backlund from '79 on Youtube that is so good it made me think I could have voted Inoki even higher, and wonder if when this poll is redone in another ten years I'd consider Backlund on the strength of his post-WWF Japan stints and the '78-'82 run. There's as much awkward/kinda bad Backlund as there is great Backlund, but the great is really great. The way they struggle for power moves and display their strategies for defending against pins felt like something so absent from wrestling right now. Their pace was exactly right.

[Lee Casebolt]

By the sound of it I am definitely going to be the high Inoki vote, and that's having forgotten how much I love the Roland Bock match.

[ohtani's jacket]

Lou Thesz always kind of bores me, but I liked his old man performance against Inoki. It was a neat maestro performance simply to Pat O'Connor's All Japan stuff from the same era.

 

I broke my own rule and watched Ruska/Inoki I. It wasn't that bad actually, though I can see why the martial arts world thought it was a sham. From memory, it drew one of the biggest television ratings of all-time. Ruska heeled it up far more than you'd expect.

 

Inoki vs. Strong Kobayashi was similar to the Sakaguchi match and another strong native vs. native bout from the mid-70s. Inoki bled and there was a cool image of him bandaged up at the end with a blood stained face.

 

I got a kick out of Andre and Inoki working the mat. I doubt armwork is what anyone wants to see from an Andre bout, but given my general dislike for limbwork (or rather the over-reliance of it as an expression of psychology), it was surreal enough to be some of the most fun limbwork I've seen in a while.

[ohtani's jacket]

 

I got a kick out of watching Inoki wrestle a potbellied Akram Pahalwan under the rounds system in 1976. Worth it alone to see the fashions Pakistani gentlemen were wearing in the 1970s and the subtle heeling from Inoki's camp.

 

 

So, apparently Akram tried to shoot on Inoki during this bout and Inoki ended up breaking the guy's arm when he wouldn't submit to the chicken wing arm-lock. I Because Akram was the nephew of the Great Gama, Inoki returned to Pakistan a few years later to help restore the family's dignity. He let Akram's 19-year old nephew, Jhara, manhandle him for large portions of a five round draw and symbolically raised his hand at the end. I didn't know any of this. I actually thought the younger Pahalwan making mincemeat out of Inoki was a sight to behold until I read up on it. When I realised Inoki wasn't putting up a fight the bout took on an entirely different light. One thing I'll say for Inoki, he may be a charlatan but he wasn't afraid to stick his neck out. And if you've never seen a Pakistani in-ring celebration you really should.