The Wrestler

Until I recently read Antonio Inoki's obituary the other day in the NYT, I wasn't aware he had been spending anytime, anywhere, alive and breathing. It was news to me.

Of course not to all. After the strangest professional athletic contest ever held, Inoki moved on to become a politician and world-wide ambassador for Japan. Who knew?

Anyone who is now entering their zip code at Joe Namath's bequest to make sure they're getting all the benefits they're entitled to with their Medicare coverage, will faintly recall the 1976 match at Shea Stadium in Flushing, New York between the Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki and the world heavyweight boxing campion Muhammad Ali that ended in a draw, as Inoki flung himself to the mat, held onto the ropes, and kicked his way around the ring, only allowing Ali to land two punches while in the process bruising Ali's shins. In its own way, it was a match for the ages.

To understand the absurdity of how the match unfolded, consider Inoki's remarks a year after the match when he told the NYT: "I was doing my best to win. It wasn't a fake fight, or it would have been more interesting."

All through the 70s hypothetical matches between Ali and Wilt Chamberlain were being imagined. Wilt, at over 7' with a reach exceeding the wingspan of a Boeing jet, was constantly being thought of as an opponent for Ali. After all, Ali had now beaten everyone, so why not get inventive?

Any contest such as that never materialized, but the match against Inoki did, held June 26, 1976 at Shea Stadium in front of 30,000 paying customers. If as P.T. Barnum said, "a sucker is born every minute," then 30,000 plus minutes had elapsed.

Aside from remembering the details of the match, I also distinctly remember the ride my wife and I took on the LIRR as we headed home while accompanying the Blarney Stone bartender Eddie Smith to the World's Fair stop on the Port Washington line. We would get off at Murray Hill, two stops east of the World's Fair stop you would use to get to Shea Stadium.

Eddie was carrying press credentials for the match, courtesy of a Black publicist Dick Edwards of New Age press. Dick was a frequent customer at the Blarney Stone on 32nd Street and Madison Avenue, as were my wife and I and countless others.

Eddie was a huge Muhammad Ali fan.  He had similar press credentials along with his good buddy P.J. Manning to the Ali/Jimmy Young fight in Landover, Maryland on April 30. 1976. For that fight, Eddie borrowed my Nikon to take pictures from his press seats. Eddie, who was the consummate talker, even managed to get into Ali's hotel room as part of the entourage that night alongside Ali's bed as the bare chested Ali lay there relaxing before the fight.

Eddie entertained Ali with card tricks and had someone else take their photo. The resulting image of Eddie alongside Ali's bedside graced the bar at another Blarney Stone  establishment, The Blarney Rock on 33rd Street, just east of Seventh Avenue, hard by Madison Square Garden. The photo is long gone from there, and I always wish I had a copy of it. I haven't heard from Eddie Smith for decades now. I did get my camera back.

Inoki was a distinctive looking figure, with a wide, jutting jaw that could remind you of Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator, or Scotty Bowman, the Hall-of-Fame head coach of the Montreal Canadians and Detroit Red Wings.

As ridiculous as the match with Ali turned out, ending in a draw with the fans throwing garbage into the ring, Inoki moved on to become a Japanese politician in the upper house, launching diplomatic missions around the world, and even helping secure a hostage release with Iraq in 1990 that was holding 41 Japanese citizens under the rule of Saddam Hussein.

It turns out Inoki was certainly alive before he passed away at 79 in Tokyo. Which proves that when you are no longer bouncing around a ring kicking at Muhammad Ali, people in this country tend to forget who you are and what you've been doing.

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