Antonio Inoki

[jdw]

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.

 

Cool. Glad to see you liked this.

[jdw]

 

The Powers match I saw was good but not one of Inoki's best. If anything it epitomised how a lot of people see Inoki: as a guy who lies around on the mat for long periods of time, picks things up a bit, then lies back down again. I kind of see Inoki as more of an interesting worker than a great one, but I can see why people find his style boring. His matches don't build to a dramatic climax and despite the bid for legitimacy they're not that great shoot style bouts either. I respect his single-mindedness, though.

 

Turns out the YouTube version only showed the first fall. The full version had more of a climax than I gave them credit for. Powers went into total heel mode after the first fall and Inoki had to fight through injury to take the title. Didn't change my opinion of the match much but at least it rounded out that rough edge.

 

 

I recall that the first Powers-Inoki match that I saw had me thinking, "I want to see more of this Powers guy with folks who can go." Not going to say I thought Inoki sucked: he held up his end of the bargain, and was perfectly fine. But Powers was the fun and interesting one making it a good / watchable match.

[ohtani's jacket]

Inoki vs. Superstar Billy Graham was pretty awful, but it was amusing how the more Graham sucked, the harder Inoki worked to make him seem like a threat. Worked harder than against Dusty, Patera and Masked Superstar combined.

 

Also, you never really hear much about it, but the angle where the IWE guys were jumping Inoki and cutting his hair is a strange bit of booking. Apparently, it led to a Rusher Kimura vs. Inoki hair match, which seems surreal to me.

[ohtani's jacket]

Man, if you search for Inoki in Japanese, YouTube becomes the Random Inoki Match Generator. Wanna see Inoki vs. Brute Bernard (you don't), search in kanji.

 

Inoki vs. Murdoch from '71 was disappointing. Dickie was a solid mat worker but not a great one, and they spent a long time working the same body part. But it was the layout of the falls that made it subpar. Really lame booking to end the second fall. Took a lot of the shine off the bout. Murdoch had some nice touches in the third fall as he became exasperated and tried to cheat but even that made the bout uneven as he'd worked so cleanly up until that point. That was a common trope with foreign heels where they'd flip out in the final fall, but the better matches have the heel sow the seeds much earlier.

[ohtani's jacket]

Nothing much happens in the Umanosuke Ueda nail death match aside from Ueda being scared of Inoki's armbreaker (and why not?) but it's always fun seeing Ueda stooge about. His alliance with Tiger Jeet Singh is more awesome than anything the pair of them could produce in the ring, but it's great seeing them hug and console each other like Arn Anderson and Larry Zbyszko. No-one fell on the nails. I'm not sure why that surprised me. I'm not sure what it says about me that I thought someone should fall on the nails.

 

The Inoki & Yoshimura vs. Victor Rivera & Baron Scicluna tag from '67 has to be the earliest Inoki we have on tape, right? The comic stooging from Rivera and Scicluna would have been a life changing experience for a young Fuerza Guerrera if he'd seen it. The Japanese workers didn't seem to know how to react to it, though. Rivera took some fantastic apron bumps in and out of the ring. Psicosis would have been proud.

 

The only reason to watch Inoki vs. Red Texas from Madison Square Garden is that it's Red Bastien under the hood. Of course, he's working a generic masked wrestler gimmick so it's not really Red Bastien Red Bastien, but you take what you can get. Some PWO poster cries "boring!" at the beginning of the bout and Inoki proceeds to work a heatless bout that didn't do much to push his credentials as the world's greatest martial artist. Nice pinning combination at the end, but as slow as the wait between paydays.

[ohtani's jacket]

Adrian Adonis comes to the ring against Inoki in full leathers. He looks like he snorted something before leaving the dressing room and attacks some fan who touched him. Reminds me of when I was young and would bend the ear of any Japanese rock band who came through Auckland about Japanese pro-wrestling. And these rockers would always talk about how cool Adonis was. Match has a short running time and Andre comes out to eat into it even further. Hogan attacks him from behind and the pair brawl their way to the changing rooms. Adonis vs. Inoki is fast and furious but too short to matter.

 

Inoki vs. Pedro Morales is perfectly mediocre fare, but that should be obvious before clicking on it.

 

I watched a full length version of Ruska vs. Inoki and enjoyed it even more the second time, but hey, I dig all those Don Nielsen works too. Ruska vs. Inoki III from Seoul is also watchable. Better than watching Inoki vs. WWWF guys bar Backlund.

 

Watching Inoki beat Parv's boy, Hiroshi Hase, in 1992 was perversely entertaining. Hase actually did a pretty good job of respectfully jobbing. Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye.

 

I always knew I had it in me to beat Parv's boy.

I can't find any of the other Inoki matches I want to watch online so I thought I'd wrap this up by watching the 2/86 Fujiwara bout. Still a bucket load of fun. Fujiwara is the greatest. Inoki may have pushed my top 100 but it would have been touch and go. I actually think he would have been vying for my #100. Maybe 100-95.

[ohtani's jacket]

I finally got the chance to see the Inoki/Bock match from Stuttgart. It's a match that would bore the beejesus out of most folks, but I thought it was an absorbing contest and another addition to my list of Inoki classics; matches which may not be classics in the true sense of the word but certainly are in Inoki's case.

 

What made it so interesting is that while it was clearly a work, Bock was about as uncooperative as anyone I've seen in a pro-wrestling bout. He no sold practically every thing Inoki threw at him and gave him precious little on the mat. And the strange thing about it was that Inoki seemed reluctant to do anything about it. Not that I blame him, as when the tension started to mount Bock appeared down right murderous. Now you might say that Bock being uncooperative is unprofessional and the very definition of a dangerous and poorly worked match. And you might be right if Bock hadn't been an absolute beast with vicious strikes and almighty dead lift suplexes, i.e. one badass motherfucker. His behavior gives the match even more of a shoot style feel than they intended, and while Inoki is made to look bad at times, it's as close to true Gotch style "professional wrestling" as I've seen. More so than any shoot style bout, to be honest, because it's non-cooperative.

 

I think a few people here would appreciate it so check it out you guys.

[Jetlag]

Bock is such a fascinating character. He was an olympic level wrestler who lost his spot on the olympic team (to none other than Wilfried Dietrich) and turned pro. He promoted his own events where the main event was him vs. an actual bear. He didn't care much for pro wrestling and it showed.

 

I appreciated the match. I watched it years ago and was puzzled, but knowing what I was getting into, I could enjoy it for what it was. Funny how Bock became a legend to the japanese due to his lethargic behaviour and uncaring attitude. You can tell he influenced guys like Takayama, Suzuki etc. I think I remember reading Yuki Ishikawa was a fan of his too. From the looks of it wrestling him must have absolutely sucked as he was fucking up Inoki like you expect an olympic level amateur to fuck somebody up. God can you imagine being Inoki and wrestling Bock for several times on this tour? By the end he looked like some kind of satanic undead with the blood mark on his forehead and utter disregard for everything Inoki did. My favourite moment was Inoki doing the Robinson belly to belly suplex to the ring apron, where Bock just lands on his feet, goes straight back into the ring and dumps Inoki on his head with the scariest belly to belly suplex I've ever seen.

 

And yeah, even with all the no selling, things get really intense towards the end here. When Bock started busting out the headbutts I was feeling like I was watching a real sport. I wish the japanese crew had filmed the whole tour so we could know wether all 70s german wrestling was this intense. I imagine Bock vs. Andre or Pete Roberts being spectacular.

[ohtani's jacket]

Finally found another Inoki vs. Backlund match online and it didn't disappoint. This time it was their 12/6/79 match. It wasn't really worked as a Strong Style match but it wasn't quite a traditional JWA style match either. For the most part, it was finisher heavy as it was a compact one fall bout and both guys were trying to land the 'knockout' punch, so to speak. Backlund's feats of strength were impressive -- the deadlifts and the suplexes -- and his selling was brilliant as always. He did some goofy punch drunk selling from repeated headbutts which I can imagine people disliking but when more beloved wrestlers like Hansen or Terry Funk do it then it's considered gold. The finish was a piece of shit and I imagine this is one of the weaker matches in their series but I liked the work. The continual struggle to apply the octopus hold was cool and the effort was there throughout. Not an Inoki Classic but better than 90% of Inoki vs. foreigner bouts.

[elliott]

I just watched the match against Kintaro Oki and holy crap was it awesome. Looking for more 70s recommendations. I'm familiar with the usual stuff like Backlund, Dory Jr, Robinson matches. But what else is out there like this Kintaro Oki match or the Chris Markoff match? I think Jetlag said he really liked a match against Tiger Jeet Singh? Which one was that? 

[strobogo]

I really do enjoy matches where dudes just do not take Inoki's shit and bully him. There aren't that many, but the above mentioned Rolland Bock match, Vader, and the Thesz/Gotch vs Inoki/Sakaguchi match where Lou just straight up legit bullies him with ease and treats him like a rookie is hilarious. I definitely do enjoy all the Backlund matches, but I have come to really enjoy Backlund because he's so weird even if I don't find too many of his matches particularly entertaining as a whole. Inoki/Brisco from JWA in 1971 is awesome. Some real proto UWF stuff that I wouldn't be surprised was the specific inspiration for Maeda/Takada/Sayama to get into wrestling and go down the path that ended up being UWF. The Dory match in 69 is real good, too. I enjoy all the Andre matches, and there is one match with Tiger Jeet Singh that is good (and I mean one) but I can't remember which of the hundreds it is. 

I know there was a bunch of really cool shit on youtube that NJ nuked when they started NJ World and then never uploaded those matches, including a ton of Inoki stuff that I wish I would have checked out while I could. I also wonder what could have been if NJ had a better cast of gaijin in the 70s, because god damn you look at his match list and there's some real dire looking shit compared to what was going on with AJ at the same time. And really into the 80s as well. I think Inoki's 90s output is rarely talked about but he has some real good spectacle matches with Hase/Tenryu/Muta/Vader.  

Over all it's hard to argue that Baba doesn't have a better track record despite Inoki being a much more capable athlete and mechanically better. I do wonder how much of that is the gulf in talent both guys were regularly working with in their prime years.

[Makai Club #1]

45 minutes ago, strobogo said:

I really do enjoy matches where dudes just do not take Inoki's shit and bully him. There aren't that many, but the above mentioned Rolland Bock match, Vader, and the Thesz/Gotch vs Inoki/Sakaguchi match where Lou just straight up legit bullies him with ease and treats him like a rookie is hilarious. I definitely do enjoy all the Backlund matches, but I have come to really enjoy Backlund because he's so weird even if I don't find too many of his matches particularly entertaining as a whole. Inoki/Brisco from JWA in 1971 is awesome. Some real proto UWF stuff that I wouldn't be surprised was the specific inspiration for Maeda/Takada/Sayama to get into wrestling and go down the path that ended up being UWF. The Dory match in 69 is real good, too. I enjoy all the Andre matches, and there is one match with Tiger Jeet Singh that is good (and I mean one) but I can't remember which of the hundreds it is. 

I know there was a bunch of really cool shit on youtube that NJ nuked when they started NJ World and then never uploaded those matches, including a ton of Inoki stuff that I wish I would have checked out while I could. I also wonder what could have been if NJ had a better cast of gaijin in the 70s, because god damn you look at his match list and there's some real dire looking shit compared to what was going on with AJ at the same time. And really into the 80s as well. I think Inoki's 90s output is rarely talked about but he has some real good spectacle matches with Hase/Tenryu/Muta/Vader.  

Over all it's hard to argue that Baba doesn't have a better track record despite Inoki being a much more capable athlete and mechanically better. I do wonder how much of that is the gulf in talent both guys were regularly working with in their prime years.

UWF was originally supposed to be a throwback to 70s New Japan before Sayama was brought on board, Shimma got ousted and then the style naturally turned into what it because I believe. 

Inoki is a favourite of mine. Despite all of his faults, his clunkers and misteps, he has something that makes me invested instantly. The Masa Saito no ropes match is an absolute classic. Great pre no ropes, incredible post no ropes. Plus Choshu goes apeshit. The match against Fujinami in 88 is my all time favourite New Japan match, doing virtually the impossible by successfully passing the torch through not losing. It takes a genius to do that. 

[ohtani's jacket]

11 hours ago, elliott said:

I just watched the match against Kintaro Oki and holy crap was it awesome. Looking for more 70s recommendations. I'm familiar with the usual stuff like Backlund, Dory Jr, Robinson matches. But what else is out there like this Kintaro Oki match or the Chris Markoff match? I think Jetlag said he really liked a match against Tiger Jeet Singh? Which one was that? 

I have a thread in the Microscope covering 70s and 80s New Japan. I recommend checking out his matches against Strong Kobayashi and Sakaguchi. To me, Sakaguchi is one of the most legitimately underrated workers in wrestling history. I also recommend his work against Thesz and his worked shoot matches. If you liked the Markoff match, check out his matches against Killer Karl Krupp. I am pretty sure he has at least one decent Andre match as well. 

[strobogo]

Kintaro Oki is real weird to me as I've seen matches where he literally does nothing but headbutts and it's the worst, and I've seen matches where he does nothing but heatbutts and it's pretty awesome. A couple of classic Baba/Jumbo vs Oki/Kim Duk tags in the mid 70s that really set the template for the high energy hateful tags more associated with Choshu's influence on AJ. Sakaguchi was also definitely awesome.

[Childs]

I formed my opinion of Inoki watching him week to week as we went through all the '80s New Japan footage. With another five years of perspective, I can say that was not the best way to judge a guy who excelled in big matches and peaked in the '70s. So one of my little sub-projects this time around is to look at Inoki with fresh eyes, and there is a very good chance he'll make my list. The inconsistency will probably keep him out of the top half, but he did a lot of things that I value highly. 

I just watched the aforementioned Oki match for the first time in awhile; there's this incredible visual moment when Inoki is staring defiantly at Oki after taking a string of headbutts, and the blood starts slowly trickling down from his hairline. From there, the crowd is ravenous for his comeback, which arrives swiftly and violently. You have to respect a guy who can create that kind of drama in a wrestling match. 

[WingedEagle]

2 hours ago, Childs said:

I formed my opinion of Inoki watching him week to week as we went through all the '80s New Japan footage. With another five years of perspective, I can say that was not the best way to judge a guy who excelled in big matches and peaked in the '70s. So one of my little sub-projects this time around is to look at Inoki with fresh eyes, and there is a very good chance he'll make my list. The inconsistency will probably keep him out of the top half, but he did a lot of things that I value highly. 

A list of Inoki matches to check out from the 70s would be much appreciated.

2 hours ago, Childs said:

I just watched the aforementioned Oki match for the first time in awhile; there's this incredible visual moment when Inoki is staring defiantly at Oki after taking a string of headbutts, and the blood starts slowly trickling down from his hairline. From there, the crowd is ravenous for his comeback, which arrives swiftly and violently. You have to respect a guy who can create that kind of drama in a wrestling match. 

This sounds awesome and reads like Okada/Shibata.

[GOTNW]

Inoki seemed really hurt in the last project by the ridiculous idea he should be judged by his performances in random 80s six man tags or whatever it was that the DVDVR crew watched a bunch and there not being enough people to push back that narrative.

I basically have no time to watch pro wrestling these days, but in the last.....I don't know, it could have been year, six months, what is time? I watched the Markoff match and rewatched the 1971 Destroyer bout.

The Markoff match completely blew me away. I wasn't really expecting THAT level of violence and heat from a 1969 match. It really felt like a legendary brawl that I could put side by side with any of the great lucha apuestas (and aesthetically reminded me a lot of them too). Just a complete masterclass in crowd control, and a great example of how to do projected violence (meaning, you do stomp on someone's head for real, but not with the intensity Daisuke Ikeda will; but the context, selling and the manipulation of crowd make it seem like a war scene). It's the type of match where you can see Inoki's legendary aura growing on the spot. Where the hell was this match when we were doing the Best Of Pre-80s Japanese Wrestling Project?

The Destroyer match was interesting. It was very much a 70s style grappling oriented bout, but what was most shocking about it was the pace. I realise there's a solid chance it was due to limited TV time or some other shenanigans, but the fact remains this match stands as a very unique example of a 70s grappling sprint. The elaborated milking of holds you'd expect from 70s matwork is almost completely absent here. If you want a crash course in 70s grappling stylistics, and have the attention span of a post-modern fan: this is the perfect match for you.

Obiously, I think the work itself is excellent; but still, the way it is worked is what stands out, especially when you consider that Inoki is the wrestler that time and time again chose to have these types of unique matches, even (or more correctly, especially and even more so) as he was in charge of things. I enjoyed his tag with Baba, and in one of their tags against the Funks noticed him and Dory Funk Jr. seemed to have excellent chemistry. So I'm looking forward to watching those hour long matches they had about two years from now.

[fxnj]

I didn't get the claims put forth by the DVDVR guys of him being some no-selling slug even while the set was going on, so it's especially baffling to me people still seem to buy into that idea and let it color their perceptions. I feel like he's long overdue to get his work re-evaluated and get his due as an all-time great like has happened with Tenryu and Hashimoto. I remmeber the DVDVR guys citing the Fujinami/Inoki 1985 match as one of the dreadful Inoki performances that sunk his rep for them, but all I saw was a fantastic old school vs. new school grappling match and I have to assume the people shitting on it simply didn't understand his character. The 1988 rematch, by the way, builds perfectly off the 1985 match and is a strong contender for best match I've ever seen.

This feels weird saying it as 90s AJPW guy, but I'm gonna go against the oft-made claim of Misawa as the GOAT ace and say Inoki deserves that title. By that, I obviously don't mean he had the better matches than Misawa but that as far as looking like a bad-ass, knowing just the right way to play to the crowd, and always coming through with showing he could back up his aura, Inoki is second to none for me. Just watch his 1984 stuff with Choshu and I think it's awe-inspiring just how heated the match feels from the very beginning and how he manages to sustain that heat the whole time even with slower paced grappling.

I'm also hoping people are able to look at his matwork with more patient and accepting eyes than he's been given in the past. Since the last poll, there's also been a handful of JWA tags with Baba that have been made more widely available that give a more complete picture of what a beast he was even early on. I'd specifically recommend the tag with Baba against Mil Mascaras and Spiros, featuring one of the most breathtaking matwork exchanges I've seen between him and Mil.

[KinchStalker]

21 hours ago, GOTNW said:

Where the hell was this match when we were doing the Best Of Pre-80s Japanese Wrestling Project?

A bunch of JWA stuff came out in 2019. It turns out that the big, well-circulated matches from the NTV side of things (Rikidozan/Destroyer II, Baba/Fritz '66, Baba/Destroyer, Toyonobori/Destroyer, etc) all came from a nine-week program of JWA highlights that the network put on after they dropped the JWA program, but while the first episode batch of Taiyō ni Hoero!, the long-running police procedural which would receive the JWA's old 8pm Friday timeslot, was still in production. But while they'd released individual matches from it over the decades, I don't think they'd ever reaired the whole thing until 2019. The Markoff match, important as it was for Inoki, fell victim to that.

[fxnj]

No idea where the recording came from, but Inoki/Markoff was definitely out there way before 2019. Here's a 2007 thread where Loss has it listed as a match he's seen/rated.

 

[KinchStalker]

I stand corrected. My noobness in this community is displayed yet again.

[Tim Cooke]

16 hours ago, KinchStalker said:

I stand corrected. My noobness in this community is displayed yet again.

You bring WAY too much to the table.  Unless you're a tape list scourer or we're around at the time, it's not easy following all of these releases. 

The 2019 JWA did bring a few new matches, most notably the 12/01/70 Baba/Inoki vs. Kininski/Johnny Valentine 

[Childs]

For the record, this was my DVDVR nomination post for the '85 Inoki-Fujinami, and I've long said our decision not to include the '88 match was a major mistake. So I think the notion that we were categorically anti-Inoki is wrong, though I don't think it's wrong to say he was a boring week-to-week worker for much of the '80s.

 

I imagine this will be divisive. They went about 35 minutes and stayed on the mat for the first 25 or so. I thought they killed the time fairly well, working a wide enough variety of holds and showing enough intensity to keep it interesting. But some folks will probably find the body of the match dull. Fujinami popped the crowd with a mid-match scorpion and ultimately put Inoki in the figure four for several minutes (Inoki did his part by selling the leg work well.) That led into a 10-minute build to the finish, which featured some great back-and-forth action and had the crowd going apeshit. I particularly liked it when Inoki ducked Fujinami's enziguiri and hit his own to shift the momentum only to have Fujinami come back and connect with the enziguiri after all. The ending, with Fujinami fighting out of Inoki's octopus hold several times, also worked. Both men showed genuine emotion postmatch in a nice cap to an effective master vs. protege story. Nomination.

[fxnj]

I've cringed my fair share of times while reading old posts by myself, so I'm definitely not trying to ream anyone for what they thought years ago, but here's goodhelmet with a very different take to show I'm not making stuff up here.

That said, if Inoki/Fujinami 1985 wasn't a match that hurt Inoki's rep, what are some specific examples of matches that did? I've gone out of my way to try looking for these "really shitty Inoki matches that didn't make the set" and I haven't found them at all. Instead, watching the series with Fujinami and Choshu as mentioned actually raised my opinion of him a lot, and there's also stuff like the 1983 Inoki/Fujinami vs. Choshu/Saito for him having a great match in a smaller setting.

[Childs]

There was plenty of anti-Inoki sentiment, don't get me wrong. I just wanted to get across that our assessments of his matches, even those that didn't make the set, were not one-note.

I don't particularly want to comb through all the old disc reviews to find examples of Inoki matches I didn't like, because I basically agree with the more positive views of him from recent years. He was frequently a great ace and big-match worker, and that looms larger than whatever inconsistency I perceived 15 years ago.