Inoki-ism, WWE and the Quest for Legitimacy

For the past few years now we’ve seen the influence mixed martial arts, particularly the UFC, has had on the WWE. While the connection between MMA and professional wrestling is nothing new, recent developments have brought it back to the fore. Ronda Rousey recently main-evented WrestleMania, Brock Lesnar is back as a focal point of television time, having re-ignited a UFC feud with Cain Velasquez from a decade ago, and heavyweight boxer Tyson Fury showed up as a special attraction. In browsing the online reactions to these events, I saw a phrase thrown out as a joke that caught my eye, and it wound up occupying my mind to the point of writing this article; ‘Vince McMahon is an Inoki-ist’.

To see if that statement has any credence, we must first look at what exactly ‘Inoki-ism’ is, that being the wrestling ideology of he who the term is named after, Antonio Inoki. Whether you love him or hate him, there is no denying that he has had a major influence over the Japanese wrestling style, as well as the ecosystem of the companies we see operating today. 

Inoki began wrestling in 1960, having been trained by ‘The Father of Puroresu’, Rikidozan. On top of his teachings, Inoki soon became a disciple of Karl Gotch and his brand of shoot/catch-as-catch-can wrestling which he encountered during an excursion to the United States during the early years of his career. It was from these shoot-based methods that Inoki would coin the term ‘strong style’ to describe his own personal wrestling style. Having wrestled for Rikidozan’s JWA (Japan Pro Wrestling Alliance) primarily in a tag team with Giant Baba, Inoki would eventually go out on his own, and in 1972, found New Japan Pro Wrestling. Now, as the owner of his own promotion, Inoki was able to book himself however he wanted, a key fact that would fuel the ‘Inoki-ist’ approach.

Inoki booking himself definitely had its consequences, with him humbly making himself a 10-time winner of the company’s annual tournaments and the first officially recognised IWGP Heavyweight Champion. Seriously, if you thought John Cena or Roman Reigns were booked too strong, according to Cagematch.net statistics, Inoki has a higher win percentage than both of them, even winning most of the matches in his grand, drawn-out decade long retirement tour. On top of this, Inoki had a grand fascination with participating in ‘real fighting’. 

But, I use the term ‘participate’ very loosely. Inoki didn’t just brand NJPW as the ‘King of Sports’ purely as a cool tagline, he believed it, and he took it upon himself to force this belief on his audience. Inoki himself is probably most known for his exhibition match with world-famous boxer Muhammad Ali, though most people tend to leave out how it was a crowd-killingly dull affair. That’s because this match and essentially all of Inoki’s ‘shoot fights’ were just as pre-determined as the rest of his pro-wrestling bouts. Other pro fighters, such as the likes of boxer Leon Spinks and various Olympic martial artists, were happy to indulge in Inoki’s weird power fantasy. Japan at the time was still enough of an outsider in combat sports that no-one tended to recognise these as official bouts, though time limit draws were commonplace, and either way, cash will never stop being green.

So, why is this a big deal? Well, with Inoki increasingly hosting these matches, and pushing martial arts onto other talents on his roster, it only served to confuse the fans, and the inconsistency only made things worse. ‘Different Style Fights’ became more and more common, these being worked martial arts bouts, often pitting NJPW wrestlers against athletes from other combat sports. Tokyo Dome cards would have these supposed ‘shoot fights’ interspersed around pro wrestling affairs, making for muddled mixed messages, not just about the product, but about their wrestlers too. One example we can see with this was the 1995 Battle 7 show in the Dome. A four-man tournament was booked for the show, with first-round bouts of a 52-year-old Inoki against Dutch savateur, Gerard Gordeau, and kickboxer Tony Palmore facing off with a bleach blonde and painted faced Sting. This already sounds like you’ve just hit ‘Random’ four times and let the computer book the show. But to drive the pure wackyness of this all home, I shit you not, Sting beat Palmore with the ‘Scorpion Deathlock’ Sharpshooter inside four and a half minutes. So now you’ve got yourself in a position where you’ve been presented Sting, who is fair to say one of the more flamboyant wrestlers at the time in NJPW with no real fighting experience, as legitimate. It’s once we hit the MMA boom of the late 90s that this sort of booking really backfires tremendously.

The UFC had formed in the US in 1993, but once it had reformed and refined its rules in the late 1990s, its popularity began to bloom. Pancrase had formed in Japan in the same year, a company that would host the likes of Ken Shamrock, Bas Ruten and Minoru Suzuki and gain a lot of traction. PRIDE had begun in 1997 as another prime stage for MMA in Japan, another successful brand amongst fans around the globe. This inevitably caught the eye of Inoki, for the worst. For whatever reason, Inoki believed that his wrestlers could have great success in the MMA ring. In short, it didn’t go well. In longer terms, it went fucking awfully. What Inoki thought would officially crown New Japan as the ‘King of Sports’ ended up bringing it to the brink of death.

Yuji Nagata was perhaps the biggest victim of Inoki-ism. Going into the new millennium, Nagata was one of the hottest prospects New Japan had to offer, with many touting him as the next big thing. After two years of losing in the semi-finals, Nagata climbs the mountain and wins the 2001 G1 Climax tournament, defeating veritable legend Keiji Mutoh in the finals after a gruelling twenty-two minute match. He is on fire. Around the same time, Inoki had decided to start up his own MMA project, siphoning NJPW funds for big New Year’s Eve stadium shows. So, after Nagata’s huge victory, he decides he would be a perfect fit for his next martial arts spectacular. Please, take a moment now and see if you can guess how it goes. Nagata, who has never had an MMA fight before in his life, is selected to face off against established Croatian kickboxing champion, Mirko Cro Cop. Nagata enters with all the fanfare in the world as the reigning G1 Champion, Inoki stood there in his corner looking on like an overbearing father pushing his own dreams onto his children. The bell rings once, and then again barely twenty seconds later. Nagata is dropped with a kick to the head and can’t protect himself as Cro Cop rains down punches until the referee stops the fight. Nagata never quite manages to retain that hype that surrounded him following his G1 Climax win, but even after all of this Inoki didn’t learn his lesson.

Inoki continued to put his wrestlers into MMA fights, hoping that he would one day find the champion to rule both sports. Nagata is placed in another fight the year after, losing again in the first round. When Kensuke Sasaki dropped out of a Pancrase fight against Minoru Suzuki in 2002, Inoki has the sense to send Jushin ‘Thunder’ Liger as a replacement. You know, the innovator of the junior heavyweight style, not really reminiscent of any martial art in the slightest, and that had never had any prior MMA experience. I know when I see him dressed in his bright bodysuit and colourful demon mask, I immediately think ‘shoot fighter’. Anywho, Liger is choked out by Suzuki in under two minutes. I honestly have no inclination as to what Inoki was thinking at this time. Inoki does eventually find some success looking for a prodigy, coming in the form of a rookie Shinsuke Nakamura long before his days as ‘The King of Strong Style’. Having found some early success in MMA, Inoki hot-shotted Nakamura to become the youngest ever IWGP Heavyweight Champion in history at just 23 years old. Various other mismanagements would lead to Inoki eventually leaving New Japan in 2005, frankly, for the good of everyone.

So, in looking at our original hypothesis, is it fair to class Vince McMahon as an ‘Inoki-ist’? For one, the most glaring difference is the active involvement of wrestlers in MMA. Where McMahon may love to bring in outside athletes to perform on the grand stage provided by the WWE, he knows that there is a clear divide in the spheres of influence and is not one to push his wrestlers into shoot fights, and refraining from presenting his bouts as such. Of course, there was the deal that allowed Brock Lesnar to face Mark Hunt (great name) at UFC 200 in 2016, but by and large, that is the extent of it, with Lesnar himself being the main influence on getting that passed rather than McMahon as an Inoki-esque fight promoter. 

That’s not to say that McMahon hasn’t dabbled into that world at all, as we know with the ghost that continues to haunt Kefin Mahon’s career, the 1998 ‘Brawl for All’ tournament. The 16-man tournament was a resounding failure, but in doing so, taught McMahon lessons that Inoki would have benefitted from himself. The ‘Brawl for All’ ended up highlighting key areas that proved a danger in integrating professional wrestling with MMA-like bouts. First, the injuries. Four of the men competing in the tournament, a whole quarter of the field, sustained some sort of injury in the process. In Brakkus’ case, his injuries would lead him to retire the year after. It was injury, some stemming from his MMA fights that led to Inoki’s golden boy Shinsuke Nakamura vacating the IWGP Championship not even 60 days into his first reign.

Another issue brought up by the tournament was the question of booking it. How exactly do you book a shoot fight? You don’t. Rumour and innuendo has it that ‘Dr. Death’ Steve Williams was brought in and groomed with the idea of establishing him through winning the tournament to build to a feud with ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin, even going so far as to preemptively pay him the $100,000 prize money. Williams then went on to get knocked out in the second round by eventual winner ‘Bodacious’ Bart Gunn. As such, the whole plan of Williams/Austin went up in flames, proving the risk of trying to make a star this way, much like what would happen to Nagata just a few years later.

On top of all of this, there was a resounding disconnect with the crowd. That was partly due to the fact that the tournament was made up primarily of less popular, lower card performers, but it was clear that the audiences had no interest in the format at all. There were a few instances of McMahon experimenting with something similar to Inoki’s ‘Different Style Fights’ seen with the ‘Lion’s Den’ matches. These were matches contested in octagon-ish cages presented to come off like that of an MMA bout, though only three ever occurred. But, in a flash of Inoki-ist thought, Vince did take part in one of these.

In what many have judged as a quest for legitimacy on the part of McMahon, Brock Lesnar has been undeniably the top star of the 2010s for the WWE. While there have been instances of pushing his dominance and squashing his opponents in seconds, Lesnar has put on great wrestling matches, and the focus has rather been on Lesnar the competitor, rather than a general approach of ‘MMA über alles’ seen more with the philosophy of Antonio Inoki. One key departure between McMahon and Inoki is just how far they will go in cementing this. 

Now, this next example is very much picking between two evils so bear with me here. Lots of well-deserved criticism landed at WWE’s feet in the wake of Randy Orton’s bout with Lesnar at SummerSlam 2016. The match’s ending saw Lesnar deliver sharp elbows to the head of Orton, busting him open and ultimately giving him a concussion. Whilst reports coming out afterwards claim Orton was aware of what he was getting into, it’s still a nasty occurrence to have played out on pay-per-view. Again, bear with me, because nothing encapsulates the sheer insanity of Antonio Inoki like ‘The January 4th Incident’. On that titular date in 1999, Shinya Hashimoto, one of the finest and most popular pro wrestlers to ever step foot in an NJPW ring, was set to face Inoki disciple, Naoya Ogawa, in a standard wrestling match. However, not long into the match, Ogawa began to throw real strikes at an unprepared Hashimoto. Hashimoto had his head brutally stomped on before the referee called the match off, and a riot nearly broke out as the ring was swarmed by NJPW wrestlers, with Ogawa’s ring crew having to protect him from the rightfully pissed off wrestlers. Though there is some debate over how much was scripted, the wide held belief is that of Inoki instructing Ogawa to hijack the match and shoot on his opponent, all in order to increase his popularity. 

Like I said, two evils. While it’s not uncommon for wrestlers to agree to getting some blood the ‘hard-way’, the plan clearly wasn’t to concuss Orton and things got out of hand. In looking at Inoki’s case, I think it’s pretty obvious his fingerprints are all over it, and was straight up barbaric. Even if it was somewhat scripted, it’s incredibly hard to watch, and still shows the length Inoki was willing to go, willing to essentially embarrass one of the most beloved and popular wrestlers in his company, not caring whether he might alienate the fans or even his own roster.

In all, it’s easy to see on the surface how McMahon could be called an Inoki-ist, purely through the MMA connections made between his marquee matches, as well as the influence of the likes of Brock Lesnar and Ronda Rousey on recent programming. However, once a closer consideration is given, it’s clear that McMahon is far from the extremes that Inoki practiced. McMahon clearly respects real fighters, but uses them as a means to build his pro wrestling brand. Inoki is a definite lover of both mediums, but in his practices, looked to build and integrate an MMA brand on top of what he had accomplished in wrestling, even if that came as a detriment to his company and his wrestlers. Inoki may have been a pioneer in Japanese wrestling, but he has undeniably left a black mark on its history too.