As timing would have it, the death of Muhammad Ali three weeks before the 40th anniversary of the Ali vs. Antonio Inoki fight, combined with a book being released, saw a new perspective for what was generally viewed as a low point of sports when it happened.
On June 26, 1976 (the night before in the U.S. due to the time change) at Tokyo’s Budokan Hall, Ali, the most famous athlete in the world at the time, and Inoki, Japan’s biggest pro wrestling star at a time when pro wrestling was one of the country’s most popular sports, met in a mixed contest.
The idea of champions from wrestling and boxing going at it wasn’t new. In the early part of the 20th century, there were flirtations made, and usually ended once boxers started training with wrestlers and realized how limiting their skill set was in that type of a contest.
Still, during the '20s, there were lots of talks between the camps of Jack Dempsey, the world heavyweight boxing champion at the time and one of the legends of the sport, and Ed “Strangler” Lewis, pro wrestling’s biggest star. Lewis, who in many ways was the forerunner of Hulk Hogan when it came to telling tales, at times talked about the fight being signed, while Dempsey would deny it. But later articles came out detailing negotiations and the match was very seriously talked about at one point.
Many boxing champions, most notably Primo Carnera, a muscular giant who really couldn’t box who was manipulated to the title through questionable means and was later a big draw as a wrestler, and even greats like Joe Louis and Jersey Joe Walcott later did some wrestling. But that was after their boxing careers had ended.
Similarly, there were name pro wrestlers who did boxing matches. Archie Moore, in particular, one of the greatest boxers of all-time, late in his career did matches against Professor Roy Shire, Sterling Dizzy Davis and Iron Mike DiBiase. All were set up by pro wrestling angles. All are also listed in Moore’s career boxing record.
Shire faced Moore on September 8, 1956, in Ogden UT, losing via blood stoppage in the third round of which was almost surely a worked match. It was Moore's 189th career fight and he was an all-time great, 39 years old at the time. Shire, five years younger, had never boxed. Shire and Moore remained close and Shire sometimes used Moore as a special referee on big shows when he promoted wrestling in Northern California in the '60s and '70s.
Moore faced Davis on March 9, 1959, in Odessa, TX, also winning by a third round blood stoppage, in what is also generally considered a worked match. Davis, who by that point was 44 years old, had never boxed and at that time in his career, was considered in absolutely no condition to fight. Davis was a childhood friend of Gorgeous George, who actually came up with some of the gimmick, in particular the somewhat effeminate actions and the fancy looking robes, that George used on national television years after Davis had them as part of his act as a drawing card in Texas and Mexico.
On March 15, 1963, Moore, then 46, just four months after being stopped by 20-year-old rising heavyweight Cassius Clay, who later became Muhammad Ali, fought DiBiase, the adopted father of Ted DiBiase and a former star college football player and All-American heavyweight wrestler.
Newspaper reports of the match, held in Phoenix, indicate reporters went in believing it would be a “pro wrestling” version of a boxing match, and being surprised and saying that it was a very legitimate fight. Still, many who weren’t there naturally would look back historically and point to the coincidence of the same finish, Moore winning via blood stoppage in the third round, as the Shire and Davis fights. DiBiase, who had also never boxed previously, became the answer to the trivia question as to who was “The Mongoose’s” last opponent in his 220 fight career.
In a sense, those matches are important historically as far as boxing goes, because Moore, considered by many boxing experts as among the greatest pound-for-pound fighters in history (the box.rec web site lists him as the greatest of all-time in that category), holds the all-time boxing record with 131 knockouts. But take away those three fights, and his 128 would only tie him for the record with Sam Langford.
Sports Illustrated, in its early days in the early 1950s, ran a piece asking who would win between Rocky Marciano, the heavyweight boxing champion at the time, and Lou Thesz, the pro wrestling world champion. The comments were split, with some feeling that Thesz was a fake and that Marciano would win, and others saying that while pro wrestling may be fake, Thesz was a real wrestler, and in a contest like that, the wrestler would take the boxer down and it would be all over from there.
Still, before that time there were really only two somewhat significant matches of that type, the Pete Sauer (a noted shooter in pro wrestling who was later world champion as Ray Steele) quick win over Kingfish Levinsky in about 30 seconds and the December 2, 1963 mixed fight where 31-year-old Gene LeBell, a two-time national judo champion who was taught by Lou Thesz and Strangler Lewis, won over Milo Savage via choke in the fourth round.
Ali vs. Inoki is a match in which history, because of what happened afterwards with the birth of MMA as a sport and with Ali becoming such a revered personality, has caused the match to be viewed very differently today than it was at the time.
Long considered a joke, it’s now starting to be considered an important piece of combat sports history, even more so with the new book, “Ali vs. Inoki: The Forgotten Fight That Inspired Mixed Martial Arts and Launched Sports Entertainment,” by Josh Gross, which recently came out.
Make no mistake about it, and history may rewrite this forever, but this was always supposed to be a worked pro wrestling match and not a legendary sports contest or the historical predecessor to the birth of a major sport.
New Japan Pro Wrestling in the mid-1970s was in a heated war with All Japan Pro Wrestling for superiority. Both promotions had weekly prime time shows on national television. While the popularity of the sport was not at the level it was during the Rikidozan boom, where matches with the Sharpe Brothers, Lou Thesz and The Destroyer did mind-boggling ratings, Inoki and his All Japan counterpart, Giant Baba, were as big or bigger sports stars at the time in their culture than Tom Brady, Stephen Curry or LeBron James would be today. Even to this day, polls in Japan of the ten most famous sports stars of the 20th century always have Baba, Inoki and Rikidozan listed in the top seven and all three were listed in a poll in 2000 in Japan, which was admittedly ridiculed for being among the 50 most influential people in the world of that century.
Baba, through his connections with the NWA, the dominant group of wrestling promoters at the time, was able to bring in the biggest American wrestling stars. At the time it was the concept of the American stars facing Baba, and his rising star tag team partner, Jumbo Tsuruta, that led to the most interest.
Inoki, blocked from mainstream talent, had to create his own stars, such as his big rival Tiger Jeet Singh, or dream matches with the likes of IWE champion Shozo Kobayashi and Korean legend Kintaro Oki.
One of the most famous aspects of the war was after Inoki did a legendary 60:00 draw with Billy Robinson in 1975, which many consider the greatest match of the era. Baba then contacted Robinson and offered him the biggest contract up to that point in time in pro wrestling history to jump sides. However, Baba didn’t use that deal to build Robinson. Robinson had never lost via pinfall in a singles match in Japan and was a household name prior to the Inoki match from his late '60s run with the IWE as world champion. Instead, Baba, who, unlike Inoki, always put business before ego, insisted that Robinson lose cleanly to him, losing two of three falls, in their first meeting. Many have second-guessed that decision, not the idea that Baba had an ego like Inoki, but because Baba felt it was important for All Japan to show he was the superior wrestler to Inoki. A decade later, things were different. When Baba signed Stan Hansen, who was Inoki’s big rival, even though Hansen had lost to Inoki, Baba protected Hansen and Hansen became to be generally considered as the biggest American star in Japanese wrestling history.
When Inoki signed Bruiser Brody, who was, with Hansen, one of Baba’s two biggest stars and who Baba at the time avoided beating, it was Inoki’s insistence on getting the first win over Brody (which Brody refused to do, always saying for business that he should get the first win and Inoki should win the rematch), which led to that relationship falling apart.
Inoki & Baba started together, with Oki, as the three people Rikidozan picked to follow him as the biggest stars in wrestling. Inoki and Baba both debuted on September 30, 1960. They wrestled many times when both were starting out. Baba won every one of those matches.
