TOKYO, Oct 1 (Reuters) – Antonio Inoki, a Japanese professional wrestling star turned politician, best known for his match with Muhammad Ali and his ties to North Korea, has died aged 79, after ‘years of fighting a rare disease, the company he founded. said saturday
“New Japan Pro-Wrestling is deeply saddened by the passing of our founder, Antonio Inoki,” the company he started in 1972 posted on Twitter. “His achievements, both in professional wrestling and in the global community, are unparalleled and will never be forgotten.”
Inoki became one of the biggest names on Japan’s wrestling circuit in the 1960s. His fame went global in 1976 when he had a mixed martial arts match with boxing legend Muhammad Ali, billed as “the fight of the century.”
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The 6ft 3in (1.9m) performer entered politics and won a seat in Japan’s upper house of parliament in 1989. He made headlines the following year by going to Iraq during the Gulf War and intervened in 1989. on behalf of the Japanese hostages, who were later released.
Tributes to Inoki flooded social media. Atsushi Onita, another professional wrestler-turned-politician, tweeted: “An era has come to an end.”
“Thank you Inoki-san. The supreme father of professional wrestling,” he wrote.
Triple H, the current chief content officer of World Wrestling Entertainment Inc ( WWE.N ) and a former wrestler, called Inoki “one of the most important figures in the history of our business and a man who embodied the term ‘fighting spirit’ “. ‘”
Inoki developed close ties to North Korea because his mentor, wrestling superstar Rikidozan, was originally from North Korea, but was never able to return home after the peninsula was divided by war.
He made numerous visits to Pyongyang as a lawmaker and met with senior officials, saying Tokyo could play a role in mediating with its nuclear-armed neighbor.
In 1995, he staged a two-day “Collision in Korea” fighting extravaganza in front of over 100,000 spectators at Pyongyang’s May Day Stadium. Inoki defeated Ric Flair in the main event with his signature “enzuigiri”, a jumping kick to the back of the head.
The fight with Ali has been described as the birth of mixed martial arts, now a multibillion dollar industry dominated by the US-based Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Ali was supposed to pay $6 million to lose in a fixed fight against Inoki, but the boxer had second thoughts coming to the event in Tokyo, according to wrestling reporter Dave Meltzer. In the end, the fight was real, but under the stipulation that Inoki could only kick out while he had one knee on the mat.
“Inoki came out of the first round on his back, crawling around the ring like a crab hitting Ali’s legs,” sportswriter Robert Whiting recalled in a 2016 podcast. “The whole fight, Ali threw a total of six punches. It was the worst I’ve ever seen.”
The bout was a 15-round draw, and Ali ended up receiving just $1.8 million, Meltzer wrote.
On his YouTube channel, called “Antonio Inoki’s Last Fighting Spirit,” he was shown in and out of the hospital in recent years, raising a clenched fist as he went for treatment for systemic amyloidosis, a rare disease which involves an accumulation of a protein called amyloid in the organs.
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Reporting by Ju-min Park in Seoul and Rocky Swift in Tokyo; Edited by William Mallard
Our standards: the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
