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.