Willie Williams, a Kyokushin karate fighter who was involved in one of the biggest and memorable pro wrestling matches of its time, passed away on 6/8. He was 68.
Williams fought Antonio Inoki on February 27, 1980, at a sold out Tokyo Sumo Hall with 11,000 fans, in a match for Inoki’s WWF World Martial Arts championship. The match went to a double count out, ending in the fourth round.
The match became legendary in Japan, and was actually huge in the Japanese comic book world before it ever happened. A rematch 17 years later was a key match in a sold out Tokyo Dome and highly rated television show. The match itself was not a real fight, but was in fact, voted the greatest fight in Japan of the 20th century. And the story behind the match was even more interesting than the match itself.
This was during the period that Inoki was able to turn himself into a national sports hero with mostly worked matches that were billed as martial arts bouts, and in Japan, to this day they are considered the earliest MMA fights even though only three of them were real, two in India (one of which wasn’t really a shoot but a work that turned into a failed double-cross and not all that different from Inoki vs. Great Antonio) and the 1976 match with Muhammad Ali. The latter was supposed to be a work but it fell apart and they had a legitimate fight with a rule set that greatly favored Ali and ended as a 15 round draw.
The match itself has one of the most interesting back stories on record.
Williams became famous in Japan as the top foreigner of Mas Oyama’s Kyokushin Kaikan School of Karate. There was a very popular comic book in Japan based on Mas Oyama’s karate in the 70s called “Karate Baka Ichidai,” written by Ikki Kajiwara, a name famous to wrestling fans because he also created the pro wrestling Tiger Mask character in comic books, that led to a television series, which eventually led to Satoru Sayama popularizing that role as a pro wrestler to giant mainstream success.
While the idea of “Karate Baka Ichidai” was that the stories were real, it was more fantasy and great exaggerations. However the comic books were so popular they led to three movies. Williams appeared in one of the movies as himself, the deadly American karate star in a scene where he beat up a bear in a jungle and in Japan had the nickname “The Bear Killer.”
You have to remember that prior to 1993, when UFC and Pancrase began, both Americans and Japanese had no clue about real fighting. The mentality of a real fight consisted of people who thought boxing was a real fight, or people who thought Bruce Lee and martial arts movies or David Carradine and “Kung Fu” were real fights. People were taught from childhood with karate studios all over the country that the karate masters were the true real fighters. Usually the only people who thought different were those who actually studied fighting, which were rare, the wrestling community and the boxing community.
It was that mindset that led to the marketing of Inoki. In the 70s, Inoki and Giant Baba were fighting over dominance in a very popular and lucrative pro wrestling market. Baba provided an Americanized version of pro wrestling, with access to the biggest names in the U.S. Inoki had to create his own stars, whether they would be by bringing back older legends like Karl Gotch and Lou Thesz, or debuting independent wildmen like Tiger Jeet Singh.
The rivalry created unique booking, because wins and losses mattered and even if people didn’t think it was all real, Baba and Inoki were fighting over who was the national wrestling hero, and really, aside from the star of the Yomiuri Giants baseball team like Shigeo Nagashima and Sadaharu Oh, really for the top spot as sports stars in the country in that era.
Baba could beat world champions like Jack Brisco and every top American, which Inoki couldn’t do. Inoki could beat Shozo Kobayashi, the top star from the rival IWE in the big dream match of the era. But then, after Inoki and Billy Robinson (who, from his time in the late 60s on television was considered the best “real” foreign wrestler at the time still in his prime) had their legendary 60:00 draw, Baba signed Robinson, offered him the biggest foreign contract to date, and then pinned Robinson in their first meeting.
Inoki and booker/manager Hisashi Shinma took a new approach, with the idea of promoting Inoki as not just a pro wrestling star, but the world’s greatest fighter. The key to the idea was to pay Muhammad Ali, the most famous boxer of that time, and probably of all-time, to lose to Inoki. Of course that fell through in the end, but conceptually, this led to the most memorable period of Inoki’s career. It started with his February 6, 1976, match at Budokan Hall where he beat Willem Ruska, an Olympic gold medalist in judo in 1972 and a guy who went to Brazil and cleaned up the toughest Vale Tudo guys, and perhaps was the toughest real fighter in the world at the time.
Inoki’s win over Ruska turned Inoki into Japan’s fighting hero. While the Ali fight was a dud, now remembered as legendary, the birth of major MMA and the biggest match in history in Japan because of the names involved, it was actually a terrible match for its time.
They continued to book Inoki in so-called martial arts bouts, with the idea without actually saying so, that these matches were shoots as opposed to the more questioned pro wrestling matches, under free fighting rules rather than pro wrestling. The idea in Japan is that when Inoki defended his NWF world title (the predecessor to today’s IWGP title), it was a big pro wrestling match. But when he defended the WWF World Martial Arts championship (which was created with the win over Ruska and retained in the Ali match), it was viewed as more real and drew a larger television audience because of the interest in mainstream fans.
Inoki had wins over Andre the Giant in 1976, Ruska in a rematch in 1976, Akram Pahalwan of India (a unique story of itself), karate champion Monster Man Eddie Everett, boxer Chuck Wepner (who once fought Ali for the heavyweight championship and was the person who the original movie “Rocky” in 1976 was based on), retired German boxer Karl Mildenberger (who once fought Ali for the championship in the 60s), bodybuilder/strongman personality Mike Dayton, and several others.
The Pahalwan match on December 12, 1976, was held at the outdoor Karachi National Stadium in Pakistan. Pahalwan was a pro wrestling legend in India and Pakistan, but by this point was older and in his 40s. He was a shooter in his youth, but Inoki, 13 years younger and still in his prime, was also trained in submissions and was a far more versatile fighter and better athlete. This was, like the others, supposed to be a pro wrestling match, but Pahalwan attempted a double-cross in the match, and it backfired, as Inoki, realizing the situation, got Pahalwan in an armbar and actually broke his arm.
This led to a match on June 16, 1979, in Lahaul, Pakistan, at Qadaffi Stadium, where Inoki faced Jhara Pahalwan (Zubiar Aslam), the 19-year-old Indian wrestling prodigy and nephew of Akram, who had been groomed for three years to gain revenge for the family against Inoki. What it was supposed to be going in is anyone’s guess since it would make no more sense in 1979 for Inoki to do a high profile shoot as it would be in 1986 for Hulk Hogan to do one. But it very clearly ended up as a real fight. There were no punches to the face, but there were body blows, head-butts and mostly wrestling. Pahalwan was clearly stronger and wearing Inoki out, who couldn’t get much offense, was mostly on his back, and never threatened with a submission. But Pahalwan had wrestling skill but no finishing skill. They went five five minute rounds before time expired.
In Japan it was reported as a draw, notable because in theory that would lead to a rematch that never happened. In actuality, Pahalwan was ruled the winner via decision and in Japan, it was like Backlund vs. Inoki was in the U.S., a match pretty much hidden from history.
Inoki continued his big martial arts matches with wins over Ruska in South Korea and Kim Klokeid in Japan.
At the same time, in the late 70s, a new comic book series came out in Japan called “Shikakui Jungle” (Squared Jungle). The comic book series was built to where it would end up with the real fight of the century between Inoki and Willie Williams. The comic book became so popular that there was a demand for this fight in real life.
“The match had to take place,” noted Japanese pro wrestling historian Fumi Saito. “It was not necessarily Inoki calling the shot.”
In 1979, there was a 160 man tournament with no weight classes in Japan under karate rules to find out who was the best karate fighter. Williams made it to the final four, losing in the semifinals.
But even though he didn’t win, Williams was still billed as the karate world champion.
Essentially, there were far too many people involved in putting this match together, as you had the karate side and the pro wrestling side, and the match was felt to be so big when it comes to interest, that both sides felt they had to go through with it. But neither side would agree to lose.
There was hope to go to a secret location and work out a match, like Inoki had done with the non-pro wrestlers he had worked with. But fear of double-cross of injury led to that not happening. If anything, it was the karate people who wanted to “prove” a karate guy could beat up Inoki, who was by far the more famous of the two, than the other way around. However, TV Asahi was the key money people, and Inoki was their guy, so he was not going to be put in a position to be shot on or lose. Kajiwara and his people, Inoki, Shinma, movie people and karate people were involved in a number of secret meetings trying to work out how to work out compromises and do the match.
Even so, on the night of the bout, Williams had a large group of badass Kyokushin karate guys as his bodyguards, and they were not involved in the negotiations, and they were very aggressive, believed to be looking for a fight. Inoki brought Tatsumi Fujinami, Riki Choshu and Haruka Eigen, three of the toughest guys from his stable, to be in his corner. His two believed to be New Japan’s toughest guys, retired trainer and legendary shooter Karl Gotch and Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Gotch’s top student and the New Japan policeman at the time, were not available.
The match was not a shoot, but it was as tense as any non-shoot would be. Both were on their guard. Williams, who was 6-foot-6 ½ and 230 pounds, had a big reach edge and was also quicker. Not much happened but Williams was able to land punches. He hit jabs with enough force to look real but not in an attempt to knock Inoki out. Inoki got a few takedowns but Williams would always make the ropes quickly. They fell out of the ring a few times where the karate guys and the New Japan guys would rush over.
Both sides agreed to a double count out finish at 1:24 of the fourth round. Inoki at least got his takedowns and Williams had to scramble to the ropes, so it didn’t look so one-sided and Inoki saved face. But Williams didn’t lose and looked better against Inoki than anyone.
In the 80s in particular, the match was legendary, replayed all the time. I can’t remember how many different times on sports shows that I saw that double count out finish when there would be stories on Inoki. Its reputation grew and because of the interest and how much it felt like a real fight, and because Inoki was involved, in 2003 it was named the greatest fight of the 20th century in Japan.
Makes no sense.
