It was as if he didn’t know you. I’ve had a lot of hard matches in my career, most of them in Japan because that’s how they like their wrestling, but the matches I had with Bad News were something else.
Violence was a main feature of all our matches, and I could guarantee we’d both end up hurt. If Bad News picked up something to hit you with, a plank of wood, a chair, a bottle, you had to move fast because he would hit you. He didn’t care.
Announcer Ed Whalen was so put off by Bad News’s violent matches and interviews that he briefly quit the promotion. The athletic commission in Calgary also suspended Coage. Fake or not, the matches were brutal. Coage hit Billington with fire extinguishers and chairs, and once even took a swing at him with a real axe.
To Coage, this didn’t seem extreme. “That’s the way Tommy and I approached it. He’d lay in with the chops and the punches and I would do the same. When the audience saw it, they thought, ‘This is the real thing.’”
By the time Bad News hit the big time, in Vince McMahon’s WWF, it was 1988 and the Olympian was 45 years old. McMahon changed the wrestler’s name to Bad News Brown, allowing McMahon to control the intellectual property, and inserted Coage into his circus-like promotion.
Bad News Brown was a succesful midcard heel, but never really got a big run on top of the promotion. He wrestled Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan for the world title on a number of occasions, but his highest profile match was probably a WrestleMania VI bout with Roddy Piper. It’s also one of Coage’s least favorite bouts. Piper painted himself half black for the match, a move Coage strongly objected to.
After two years in the WWF, Coage was fed up and ready to move on. The money was good, but everything else associated with the business was driving him crazy. Coage calls McMahon a “back-stabbing egomaniac who wants to put himself over and screw the rest of the world,” and explained, “Vince lied to me constantly. When I would confront him he always told me what he thought I wanted to hear and the second I turned my back he stuck the knife in it. There wasn’t a day that went by during my contract with him that I didn’t want to kick his scrawny, lying ass.”
Though Coage walked away from the WWF, he never completely left wrestling behind. He went back to Japan to work shoot style for the UWFi, but age and injuries limited him. He stayed a part of the scene and loved the UFC, even helping train young Canadian wrestlers, including UFC fighter Krzysztof Soszynski.
“I met him after he had two hip replacement surgeries,” Soszynski said. “He was still on the floor in his 50s, still grappling with the kids he was teaching. I could definitely imagine how tough he was back then and how well he would have done if [MMA] had been around. He traveled extensively to Japan as well, learning aikido and jiu-jitsu. I had the privilege of meeting him during one of my circuits across Canada. He invited me out for a two-week camp at his place in Calgary and that’s where he showed me a Kimura and an arm bar. I was hooked. Immediately after that two week training camp, I came back to Winnipeg, quit wrestling, and took up Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Six months later I had my first fight. So, he was very instrumental to me turning into a mixed martial arts fighter. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be doing something else.”
While Coage proudly represented an Eastern art in the heart of North America, the Japanese were embracing the western tradition of professional wrestling. An icon was being created in Tokyo by master gameplanners — and the ultimate chess piece was the most famous athlete in the world.
16
THE INOKI LEGEND BORN
The stabbing death of Rikidozan, Japan’s most popular wrestler and a cultural icon, was a blow to Japan’s wrestling industry the country almost never recovered from. Only two supremely gifted protégés held the business together. Shohei “Giant” Baba and Antonio Inoki were the two top titans of Japanese wrestling after Riki’s death. They had trained together in the early part of 1960 and made their debuts on the same September 30, 1960, card at Daito Ku Gymnasium in Tokyo. Baba, a former baseball pitcher and a giant at 6'9", soon overshadowed Inoki. Despite Inoki’s athleticism and natural charisma, no matter how special the performance, he would always remain in Baba’s shadow.
Inoki may have been the better performer, but Baba, towering over a foot above the average Japanese male, was a spectacle unto himself. Baba didn’t excel in just Japan: he was an almost immediate main-eventer in the United States as well. During one memorable tour of the United States in 1964, Baba challenged Lou Thesz for the NWA title in Detroit, Bruno Sammartino for the WWWF title in New York, and Freddie Blassie for the WWA title in Los Angeles. Inoki, by contrast, never made a big splash in the States.
With Baba in the lead role, the two men became tag team partners and took the Japanese Wrestling Association to new heights between 1967 and 1971. In The Top 100 Pro Wrestlers of All Time, John Molinaro explains, “Baba’s straightforward, clean living persona sanitized the corrupt image of the industry that Rikidozan had left behind, opening the doors of Japan’s major venues to pro wrestling once more. With Baba as its top drawing-card, the JWA enjoyed a renaissance, successfully renewing the archetypal Japan vs. America morality play first made famous by Rikidozan.”
As the JWA prospered, Inoki and Baba became less satisfied by their paychecks. Perhaps outgrowing their roles as mere wrestlers, the two attempted a coup in 1971. When they were sniffed out and crushed, Baba was welcomed back. Inoki was taught a lesson. He was fired in December, but landed on his feet, forming New Japan Pro-Wrestling in 1972 with old friend Hisashi Shinma. Baba would end up leaving the JWA later that year, forming his own All Japan Pro Wrestling promotion in October.
BABA LOCKS KARL VON STEIGER IN A TIGHT ARM-WRINGER
© BOB LEONARD
A fierce battle brewed between the two men behind the scenes. Baba was a known quantity and received the backing of the National Wrestling Alliance. Inoki had to settle for scraps, his top star a journeyman Belgian shooter named Karl Gotch who he pushed as the top “real” wrestler in the world. Gotch had helped train many of the Japanese wrestlers, including Inoki, and was regarded behind the scenes as the toughest man in Japan. The two headlined the first New Japan card with Gotch pinning Inoki to set up the chase. That October, when Inoki pinned Gotch to win the “real” title, it was the crowning moment of his career. Finally, he stood on top of a promotion as the world champion. It was the beginning of a lifelong obsession for Inoki to be the most legitimate wrestling star on the planet.
New Japan scored a coup when Seiji Sakaguchi, a judo player who was the third biggest star in the country, went with Inoki over Baba. Inoki needed the star power more. With access to top NWA stars like the Funks, Harley Race, and Jack Brisco, Baba had no shortage of opponents. Inoki had to be more creative. After inventing a title to take from Gotch, he bought his next world title. New Japan invested in the National Wrestling Federation, a struggling promotion out of Buffalo and Cleveland, to allow Inoki to fulfill two dreams — winning a world title and becoming a star in America.
The dream turned into a nightmare shortly after the big title win. Inoki couldn’t attract an audience and they had to close the American promotion. With his supply of foreign talent dried up, Inoki instead took on fellow Japanese star “Strong” Kobayashi, champion of Japan’s distant third promotion, the IWE. The two drew a big crowd, but not one to be outshined, Baba countered with his own holy grail win — a run with the NWA title. By paying champion Jack Brisco for a one-week title reign, Baba became the first Japanese star ever to win the wrestling industry’s top title.
The NWA title was wrestling’s crown jewel and solidified Baba as one of the business’s top players. Matching this accomplishment was no easy task. Inoki and Shinma, to their credit, came up with an idea that was designed to shake the business to its core, an idea that was conceived to make Inoki a bigger star than Baba could ever dream of being. Inoki wanted the world to bel
ieve he was a top flight martial artist. He signed Wilhelm Ruska, an Olympic judo gold medalist, for a match in February 1976. But beating Ruska was just the appetizer. Inoki and Shinma had already made a deal for the biggest wrestling match of all time — Inoki vs. Muhammad Ali in Tokyo’s Budokan Hall.
The Chin vs. the Lip
Before the match Ali was at the height of his powers. He was set to earn more than $17.4 million in 1976, causing Jet magazine to call him one of the most successful black businesses in the country. Mego made a special Ali toy, he had dinner in the White House with President Gerald Ford, the Smithsonian declared his gloves to be monuments of American history, Dean Martin roasted him on national television, and ABC’s Wide World of Sports gave him his own television special, essentially to talk about himself.
The fame had come at a great price. A year removed from the “Thrilla in Manila,” his third and final bout with archrival Joe Frazier, Ali wasn’t the boxer he had been a few years before. There were already rumblings he should retire — and it was universally agreed that a match with a professional wrestler would be a disgrace. Red Smith, the nation’s leading sports columnist, wrote: “Perhaps it is naive to feel that a world champion ought to comport himself like a champion. After all, boxing is show business, more so than ever now that every performance by the champion is a multimillion-dollar production. Maybe it is unrealistic to expect more of a champion than a succession of pratfalls on the burlesque circuit. Nevertheless, some do mourn the Sweet Science.”
The match went forward despite the protests from the boxing hoi polloi. There were six million reasons for the show to go on — the six million dollars Ali would take home for the bout, the biggest paycheck of his long career. Top Rank promoter Bob Arum, who masterminded the event, didn’t have to work too hard to keep Ali interested. The champ was a long-time pro wrestling fan, often crediting wrestler “Gorgeous George” Wagner as one of the inspirations for his own bombastic pre-fight interviews.
Originally he believed the match would be all in fun — a night of wrestling action that would make him rich and make Inoki’s career. The plan was to finish the evening’s contest with some classic pro wrestling role-play: “Ali would pound on Inoki for six or seven rounds. Inoki would be pouring blood. Apparently, he was crazy enough that he was actually going to cut himself with a razor blade. Ali would appeal to the referee to stop the fight. And right when he was in the middle of this humanitarian gesture, Inoki would jump him from behind and pin him. Pearl Harbor all over again.”
What Ali didn’t count on was the vehemence of the public’s response to the potential bout. As the two toured the country with the legendary wrestling bad guy Freddie Blassie, chosen for the role because he was a well-known heel in both America and Japan and had the gift of gab, they were met by a skeptical press. Ali was feeling the heat. The martial arts community was equally skeptical of Inoki. For years they had wanted to test a boxer against an Eastern martial artist. Having that opportunity wasted on a fake wrestler stuck in their craw. Donn Draeger, probably the foremost martial arts historian of the time, told friends the bout was sure to be a setup:
Inoki can’t wrestle, but looked fierce and could be taught to roll around. . . . Inoki, like Baba, is not world champ except in his own billing.
Inoki’s recent “defeat” of Wilhem Ruska was a farce. Ruska could murtilize him if he was allowed to do so; so could Anton Geesink. The whole thing with Ali is a promotion gimmick.
Still, Inoki and Ali continued to hype the match, tearing each other down in the media at every opportunity. Ali dubbed Inoki “the Pelican” in reference to his large chin. The Japanese wrestler told American reporters he had a unique method of preparing his now famous jaw for Ali’s power — having martial artists step on his face with their heels 100 times a day to strengthen it. “When I was young I was very embarrassed by my chin and I went to a plastic surgeon to have it changed,” Inoki said. “He said it would be a good trademark. So I kept it. And he was right.”
The plan to make more money was relatively simple. Each major city would feature the match on closed circuit, showing Ali on a big screen after a night of local action. Ali and Inoki were touring the whole country to drum up interest, but in the wrestling world, only Vince McMahon Sr. took a real interest in promoting the event. The NWA, initially scheduled to play a big role with champion Terry Funk taking on boxer Henry Clark in a mixed match, ended up having little to do with the spectacle. Ali was getting plenty of attention on local news outlets throughout the country. On wrestling programming in most territories, however, the bout wasn’t heavily pushed.
But in New York, where the press set the trends, the show was a hot topic, getting lots of play in the local media. McMahon planned a big show to take advantage of the interest and get the crowd ready for the main event on closed circuit television. His top star Bruno Sammartino would be looking for revenge against Stan Hansen, a rising prospect who had broken Sammartino’s neck in a storyline and in real life. Underneath the title bout was wrestling’s top attraction Andre the Giant taking on Chuck Wepner, a tough boxer who had gone the distance with Ali the year prior. With that amazing lineup, McMahon hardly needed Ali and Inoki to put 32,000 in Shea Stadium. The boxer versus wrestler matchup was just icing on the cake.
In the weeks leading up to the fight, Ali made the talk show circuit and even did some pro wrestling. He did a run in during a Gorilla Monsoon match on WWWF television and the former amateur standout, by then a bloated 400 pounds, put Ali on his shoulders with an airplane spin and dropped him on the mat like a sack of potatoes. On ABC’s Wide World of Sports, a disgusted Howard Cosell called the action for what was purportedly an Ali training session with two wrestlers, but what in actuality was some obvious pro wrestling tomfoolery. Ali took a back breaker, a jobber bladed, causing guest referee Verne Gagne to stop the action, and bad guy manager Bobby Heenan took an outrageous pratfall for an Ali punch that missed by at least a foot. Cosell was beside himself. “The thing is, in all this nonsense,” the announcer who had rode Ali’s coattails to fame and fortune said, “Ali could get hurt.”
Heenan remembers Ali as a savvy guy, hip to the wrestling business and how they made their magic:
Before he met with Ali, Verne Gagne told us not to “smarten up” Ali to the wrestling business. The plan was that he was going to knock off Kenny Jay real quick. Verne told Ali to be careful when he was boxing Buddy Wolfe because he opened up easily over the eyes.
Ali said, “OK, I’ll hit him a couple of times so he can back away and cut himself.”
Ali was “smart.”
Despite themselves, members of the media were sucked into the “boxer versus wrestler” debate. It was an argument that had raged for centuries. Some recalled William Muldoon throwing the legendary John L. Sullivan to the ground. Others remembered champion boxer Jack Dempsey beating the hell out of wrestler “Cowboy” Luttrell. Everyone had an opinion, and wrestlers around the country, never shy about getting some free press, sounded off with theirs. “It would last less than a minute. I’d immediately go to the floor,” Pat Patterson said. “Ali would try to dance, but he’d have no chance. I’d get him somewhere in the legs and bring him to the mat. After that, God help him.”
Everything changed when Ali actually made it to Japan. Either the boxer, or more likely someone in his camp, had second thoughts about going through with the wrestling match. It wasn’t losing that bothered them — it was being associated with something designed to con the world. Ali had started playing the game, going corporate. Being involved in a scandal was bad for his long-term interests. Behind the scenes, according to Meltzer, he was also making the Japanese contingent very angry. Operating from the “plush Keio Plaza Hotel” where New Japan was footing a $2,166 nightly bill, Ali was letting Inoki have it in the press. Reported the Wrestling Observer:
When Ali arrived in Japan ten days before the fight, the media was following him everywhere. A
li and Inoki were doing press conferences constantly, with Ali breaking up the house with his jokes about Inoki, calling him “The Pelican” and saying how nobody knew Inoki and he was making Inoki famous. In Ali’s mind, he was telling the truth, because nobody in the U.S. did know Inoki, but in Japan, it was an insult, equivalent to an arrogant foreign soccer star coming to the U.S. and claiming that nobody in the world had ever heard of Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, or LeBron James. Every press conference ended with mock pull-aparts, with Blassie, 58 at the time and only a few years past the days he was selling out arenas on his own due to his mouth, surprisingly low-key. Even he recognized he couldn’t match the kid who grew up watching him and copying him, when it came to promoting a fight, with his main role being to hold the champ back when Ali would pretend to want to go after Inoki.
Chaos reigned behind the scenes as Ali let it be known that plans had to change. It looked for a time like the bout might be canceled. Inoki couldn’t afford that — they had spent a fortune promoting the bout around the world. Canceling it would be an epic disaster. Ali’s people knew they had the Japanese in a tough place and weren’t afraid to take advantage of them. It was decided the two men would compete in a real contest instead of a wrestling match.
The rules they negotiated were draconian. Inoki would be allowed almost no offensive techniques. He wasn’t allowed takedowns below the waist. Without gloves, he couldn’t throw a closed fist punch. He wasn’t allowed to kick to the head or body. Although Greco-Roman throws were allowed, Inoki’s famous back suplex was explicitly banned. On the ground, no submissions or ground and pound would be legal. Worse still, Ali could get the fight back to the standing position by grabbing the ropes. Essentially, Inoki’s main tool to win the fight was a karate chop. They were rules that seemed to inevitably lead to a cautious performance from the Japanese star — what other option did he have but to survive?
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