Ali vs. Inoki

by Josh Gross

  “Last round,” he said. “Fight.”

  Bannister managed to get out another promo for the Norton affair at Yankee Stadium on September 28, and offered this thought: “Ali has surprised a lot of people going fifteen rounds with the heavyweight champion of the world in wrestling, Antonio Inoki.”

  Ali began talking, then the wrestler continued with what was working, plowing a hard low kick to Ali’s left leg.

  “Come on, last round,” yelled LeBell. “Make it go, go, go!”

  Ali nearly smiled at the suggestion, looked at LeBell, and pointed: “You go.”

  “It’s been a bizarre night,” suggested Jerry Lisker. “It’s been a night Ali will never forget. Certainly the fans in attendance here will never forget. And maybe it wasn’t what they expected. But perhaps they’re seeing something that they’ve never seen before and will probably never see again.”

  (Of course they would, and two decades later the tale of mixed-style fighting in America through the Ultimate Fighting Championship would just be getting underway.)

  “Inoki is teeing off like an American football kicker, Garo Yepremian, putting his leg into a forty-five-yard field try,” Lisker continued.

  One last time Inoki plunged forward with a kick, but Ali managed to pick him off with a perfectly timed counter jab that halted the wrestler and dropped him on the canvas. The punch drew cheers from Ali’s camp, though Inoki sprang to his feet ahead of the final bell.

  An hour after it began, it was done.

  Punch totals were Inoki, 0–3, and Ali, 4–7. Every other strike landed was a kick, except for a dirty knee by Inoki from the clinch in Round 13. Only one takedown was attempted, also by Inoki in the eventful thirteenth.

  Inoki scored once to the head and three times to the body. Ali connected with four punches to the head and none to the body.

  Nearly all strikes landed were to the legs. Ali took 107 kicks, and Inoki felt 49 from the boxer.

  According to FightMetric, pioneers in MMA statistics and analysis and the first to take a comprehensive, analytical approach in combat sports, only six of Ali’s nine strikes are considered “significant,” in that they came with power. Inoki, meanwhile, is credited with landing 78 of 123 significant attacks.

  ROUND TWELVE

  Muhammad Ali extended his right hand.

  During fifteen rounds with Antonio Inoki, not once had Ali thrown a proper power punch. Yet in the immediate aftermath of an event that failed to impress anyone, the heavyweight boxing champion of the world offered up the right.

  Inoki’s frustration over what had transpired during the last forty-five minutes was equally apparent when, as fighters often do, the pair shook hands and embraced. An even mix of jeers and cheers inside Budokan Hall greeted their postfight exchange. Soon the ring was inundated with people entering from all sides as both men awaited the official decisions from their respective corners.

  Inoki casually leaned against the ropes, his team wiping him down as he cooled off. The dormant volcano Karl Gotch took in the scene. His man had let a tremendous opportunity slip away—not just for himself but for the grappling community. Gotch wanted to beat the hell out of both guys. Inoki had brought him to Japan and paid him $60,000 per season so he could teach prospects how to hook and shoot, and whatever it was Inoki had just done hadn’t been wrestling. Gotch knew.

  Freddie Blassie knew just the same and said as much to his friend Gene LeBell.

  “I didn’t think in that fight either one of them actually got to show their true ability,” LeBell said. “They were both a lot better competitors than they showed that night. But it was the first big mixed martial arts fight. It’ll go down in history as that.”

  Ali’s camp wasn’t concerned about history. Their man had engineered enough of that already, and this sideshow didn’t seem destined to go down in the annals of his most important moments. More than anything they were glad Ali had finished the fight on his feet and made it through without having been broken or twisted. Sure, his leg was a mess, but Ali was a freak of nature who always seemed to recover no matter what kind of battering he took. The hard-fought win in Manila eight months earlier and the hectic schedule leading to the Inoki match was proof enough of that.

  On the English closed-circuit broadcast Dr. Pacheco told Jerry Lisker that Ali’s left leg “was angry” but “two weeks of rest would be enough for a person of his recuperative capacity.” Any risk to the fight with Norton at Yankee Stadium was minimal, he suggested, and training wouldn’t begin for that trilogy-making bout for another four weeks. Ali was due a much-deserved rest anyhow.

  One by one members of Ali’s entourage visited Inoki’s corner to shake hands with the rassler. Blassie took his turn and, despite their shared experiences, received a lukewarm reception. He tried again later to meet with Inoki but was turned away from the Japanese wrestler’s locker room.

  Blassie wanted Inoki to win, but based on the bout he came to the conclusion that Inoki couldn’t tie his shoes— either Inoki wasn’t very skilled, or, perhaps, he wasn’t interested in toppling Ali.

  As people milled about the ring and awards, including a giant trophy, were put on display, Dundee untied and removed the sparingly used gloves John Toms from Everlast had created for Ali. Herbert Muhammad passed the heavyweight a comb so he could make sure he felt good about his hair during the TV interview. Unlike other fights, there was no need to concern himself with damage to his handsome face. Ali hadn’t even worn a mouthpiece, such was their expectation that he wouldn’t be touched—and other than Inoki’s illegal elbow in the sixth round he hadn’t been.

  Frank Bannister, the play-by-play man who three months later became the first person of color to call a major sporting event in the U.S. when Ali met Norton on a wild evening in New York City, made his way over to Ali. The boxer first thanked Allah, then mentioned civil-rights activist Dick Gregory, who was some seventy-five miles outside of Harrisburg, Penn., en route to New York, where Ali said they planned to meet on July 4 for the final leg of the former comedian’s cross-country “Dick Gregory Bicentennial Run Against Hunger in America.”

  As for Inoki’s tactics, Ali had expected the Japanese man to “try to rassle.” He said based on the experience, a rassler would not stand a chance with a boxer. The fact that Inoki gave him no opportunity to throw a punch told Ali that a rassler was scared to get knocked out by him, and if that’s how they felt then that’s likely how it would have happened.

  “I wish the fight was better but I did my best according to the conditions,” Ali said. “I’ve never fought a man who fought on the floor, and I can’t fight my style with a man who stays on the floor. He showed fear respecting my punching ability. He showed all rasslers who want to try me, I don’t think no Americans fighters are like these Orientals that good on the floor. But I never expected him to fight on the floor.”

  The great boxer explained that it made no difference to him who won. It meant nothing to his boxing status, wouldn’t impact his prestige, and, in the end, he had had fun.

  “I think I won, just the mere fact of him not fighting,” Ali said. “I stood up and I tried to fight. I was the aggressor. He wasn’t. He fought like a coward.”

  Then scores were announced. Kokichi Endo, who wrestled as a tag-team partner with Rikidōzan and was well connected inside Japan’s pro wrestling establishment, saw it 74–72 for Ali. Boxing judge Kou Toyama went the other way, tallying a 72–68 scorecard for Inoki. The decision came down to LeBell, who, as referee, deducted points in the sixth, eighth, and thirteenth rounds—LeBell recalled taking only two points away and nearly four decades after the fact couldn’t pinpoint the penalty in Round 8. His final tally registered 71–71.

  “It’s a draw!” he yelled. Well, technically, a split draw.

  “I had the best seat in the house, right in the middle of the ring,” LeBell recalled years later. “A lot of people thought Inoki had more kicks. I judged the fight not based on how many jabs or kicks were thrown. I judged based on
damage done. I could throw one hook and throw a guy into the nickel seats. And throw seventeen jabs and not do any damage. What and who did the most damage? I called it a tie. Both of them did the same amount of damage, which is nothing.”

  From the Budokan Hall cheap seats rained trash and cries of “Money back! Money back!” Made worse by the fact that few people had a frame of reference for what went down in the ring, the disappointment of an event that failed to live up to a hyped spectacle permeated everyone everywhere. “It was stupid,” said Pacheco, who hated the idea from the jump, and nearly forty years later denied even being there before admitting to blocking the trip from his stroke-stricken mind. “How could you have a match against a wrestler and a boxer? Someone is going to get fucked. And it ain’t going to be the boxer because the boxer was Muhammad Ali.”

  In San Jose, Calif., where Dave Meltzer watched with friends, people threw chairs after the decision was announced. They turned unruly around the eleventh round, “almost like a riot,” because few enjoyed or understood what was happening. Said Meltzer: “I think they were expecting something like a cross between a boxing match and a pro wrestling match and got nothing resembling either.”

  On the other side of the country, The Liberty Theater in Elizabeth, New Jersey, remained full until the end. Full of paying customers and boos. Jeff Wagenheim and his friend filed out in relative silence, hearing only a few lingering complaints. “I feel like covering my face in case anyone on the street recognizes me,” said Wagenheim’s buddy Rob. They still share a laugh about the night it felt like “somewhere between being spotted walking out of an X-rated movie house and walking away from a three-card monte game with your wallet twenty dollars lighter.”

  As confused as he was disappointed, Kevin Iole needed answers. And after the match there were more questions than before. “What did I just see?” he wondered while leaving Monzo’s Howard Johnson’s near Pittsburgh. “Was this true or phony?”

  The legitimacy of the fight had been up for debate since it had been first announced in March. Behind the scenes there was plenty of discussion about whether or not it would turn out to be legitimate, and in the end the outcome looked nowhere near predetermined.

  “People walked out of the Liberty Theater not too gratified that they had witnessed something that was real,” Wagenheim said. “They were more pissed off. I think they would have been happier to see a scripted-out but exciting event.”

  Most spectators figured if it had been worked, like the match at Shea Stadium between Andre the Giant and Chuck Wepner, it would have been far more entertaining.

  The New York Times certainly treated Ali–Inoki as sport, which is why Andrew Malcolm spent the first Saturday of summer 1976 at Budokan Hall. Considering the people involved, especially Inoki and the pro wrestling side, the bout’s authenticity was worth contemplating, but after it was done Malcolm found no reason to suspect something so shady.

  “The punches I saw, they looked real to me,” Malcolm said. “The fact that Inoki didn’t want any more of them tells me they were. The badly bruised legs on Ali, there wasn’t anything fake about that. I was disappointed as a spectator that there wasn’t any of this real boxing, or wrestling, or tying up and then flipping Ali over. I remember being tired of saying, ‘And he kicks the backs of Ali’s legs again.’ I felt like a goof. All these people around me cheering and I’m saying, ‘Now a left. Now a right. Now he’s kicking.’ There’s nobody at the other end. Every fifteen or twenty minutes they would take off what I said and started typing it. They had someone write a story based on my talking notes. I knew there was unhappiness but I wrote it off as everyone is unhappy with an athletic event. I didn’t have to pay a lot of money to see it. If I had paid a significant sum of money I would have been very unhappy. I never covered enough of them to know how often you’re really disappointed. It wasn’t a fight but it was a sports phenomenon.”

  More than anything, for Malcolm, who was admittedly in awe of a boxer he had first heard of going back to his days at Northwestern University, the assignment was an opportunity to see Ali up close and personal. Japan was one of the few places Malcolm worked where he felt like a large man, so the New York Times Tokyo bureau chief didn’t have much trouble moving his way to the front of the press mob gathered outside Ali’s locker room door after the bout.

  Malcolm knocked and the door cracked open, prompting the throng of reporters holding small microphones and cameras to coalesce. “Is Angelo there?” he asked above the din. Dundee walked to the door and vouched for Malcolm, who slid inside and immediately noticed Ali, in obvious pain, straddling a locker room bench. After the bout in the ring, Ali played coy about his left leg. It’s a “little sore, naturally,” he said. “A few welts and blood veins popping but nothing real serious.” The champ sweated profusely as he took in fluids.

  “You could see the backs of his legs. I mean, they had the shit kicked out of them,” Malcolm recalled.

  From Ali’s left quad and hamstring down through the midway point of his calf, it looked like he had dumped a motorcycle and slid along the pavement. They were red and bruised, and the worst spots were puffed up by at least half an inch. Despite Ali’s discomfort he remained in good spirits while members of his entourage decided it was time to clear the room.

  “There was some reference to white people to get out of the room. Only ‘brothers,’” Malcolm said. “Dundee looked at me and winked. He took me and literally shoved me in a locker. Like a high school locker. He says, ‘Wait here a minute,’ and shuts the door. You hear all this yelling and the bros are clearing the room. Maybe two minutes later Angelo opens the door, I come out and get an interview with Ali.”

  Gracious with his time and forthcoming with his answers, Ali winced as he reiterated his frustration over not having much of a fight. The boxer felt his $6.1 million purse was well earned—many fighters have said over the years that the money they’re paid is for training and prefight promotional work, not the actual bout, which is the fun part; or the consequences thereof, which sometimes aren’t—but had he known it was going to be a “dead show” he wouldn’t have gone through with it.

  If the production accomplished anything, Ali myopically argued to Malcolm, it proved boxers are “so superior to rasslers. Inoki didn’t stand up and fight like a man. If he had gotten into hittin’ range I’d a burned him but good.”

  Malcolm interviewed many famous folks for the New York Times and other news organizations over the years. People in public life fascinated him and one of the things he enjoyed most about being a reporter was getting close enough to see how they operated. The two most impressive public personalities Malcolm ever encountered, he said, were Ali and Diana, Princess of Wales. Having spent time around Ali before and after the bout, Malcolm sensed Ali’s innate ability to connect with anyone he wished. He enjoyed meeting new people and making them feel good. There weren’t many people who disliked Ali, and if you were anywhere close to him, Pacheco said, you succumbed to his talent. If Ali wanted you to love him, you did. This is what Malcolm experienced during his brief exchanges with the boxer. He also observed just how many people operated around Ali in what was tantamount to an “SNL skit of suck up.” The “bros” tried hard to prove their street cred to the champ. “I was like, really, does he need to hear this?” Malcolm said. “It was more that they needed to show it. I hate to think he needed that but I don’t think he minded.”

  Unaware of Inoki until the contest with Ali materialized, Malcolm’s quick impression of him settled on the notion that the wrestler was very easy to like. Malcolm considered him an Arnold Schwarzenegger type, a big guy perfectly comfortable in his own skin, the result of which generally garners attention from Japanese crowds.

  For the most part that easygoing sense of self was on display as Inoki spoke with the media in his locker room after the fight. He did the best he could, he said, and was content with a draw. Inoki expected that holding his spot on the marquee alongside a luminary like Ali would provid
e a big boost for his celebrity at home and abroad. Still, he needed to explain his tactics.

  “I was handicapped by the rules that said no tackling, no karate chops, no punching on the mat,” he told reporters. “I kept my distance to stay away from Ali’s punches. I resorted to that tactic when I found out that Ali’s hands were taped to dish out a knockout punch.”

  Inoki’s attempt to frame the contest this way did not go over with the Japanese press, which was in a maelstrom over the result. That night during the 9:00 P.M. news on NHK, commentators treated the match as a farce, remembered Hideki Yamamoto, who watched half of the contest with his junior high teammates and coaches before growing bored and returning to the baseball diamond.

  “That ended up being my thoughts on the show as well,” he said.

  In fact, though Inoki was correct about Ali’s wraps— smaller gloves prompted the boxer’s team to encase his multimillion dollar fists in extra layers of tape and gauze that should have allowed him to punch as hard and as often as he wished without damaging hands known to be brittle—the wrestler’s game plan was set in motion weeks before.

  At his dojo Inoki practiced kicking his sparring partners’ thighs, which were protected by a rubber pad bound by rope and wrapped with a towel. Now he’d have to live with the consequences.

  The next day newspapers trashed Inoki to the point that he didn’t want to go outside. One headline called the bout “the rip-off of the century.” But it didn’t take long to see that regardless of the outcome, Inoki’s participation had an impact. People from Asian countries seemed to appreciate him representing them.

  After nine days in Tokyo, most of Ali’s American entourage were slated to return to the States in plenty of time for the bicentennial celebrations on July 4. The champ, however, had other business to attend to.

  The South Korean government contacted Jhoon Rhee weeks before the fight, hoping that, if invited, Ali would accept a trip to Seoul. The key, Rhee thought, would be to catch the champ when he was in a “good mood.” During their flight to Japan the man instrumental in popularizing taekwondo throughout the United States, who settled in Washington, D.C., and opened the Jhoon Rhee Taekwondo School in 1962, took his shot.