Ali vs. Inoki (7 page)

Rikidōzan made them look smart.

Intent on establishing a lasting pro wrestling promotion, Rikidōzan returned to his adopted country after a year
and a half on the road. In short order, a pipeline of mostly large white men, presumably Americans but not always, journeyed overseas to lose—delighting Japanese audiences, most of whom remained ignorant that outcomes were predetermined. Rikidōzan's affiliation with the NWA quickly lent credibility to him and his organization, the Japanese Pro Wrestling Alliance.

More important than NWA ties was the timing of his venture. As it had for wrestling and “Gorgeous” George in the States, television became an enormous driver for Rikidōzan and pro wrestling in Japan. Within a month of the JWA starting operations on July 30, 1953, commercial broadcast networks began distributing programming to Japanese households, which, no different than postwar Americans, purchased televisions in increasing numbers.

Rikidōzan's first
puroresu
event hit airwaves on two networks, NHG and NTV, live from Tokyo, on February 19, 1954. Joining forces with Masahiko Kimura—a pioneering judo and mixed-style fighter three years removed from breaking Hélio Gracie's left arm with a joint lock that was later named in his honor in front of 20,000 Brazilians—the pair competed in a tag-team match against the big-and-tall Sharpe brothers of Canada (to the Japanese, Ben and Mike Sharpe passed just fine for Americans). Three days of pro wrestling, all live on television, served as quite an introduction for Rikidōzan, the “ethnic hero” of Japan, whose ring formula evoked memories of the Second World War. With a twist.

“I get phone calls, letters telling me hit back when American wrestlers hit me,” he told the United Press during an interview in San Francisco in 1952. “Finally, when [they] hit dirty, I hit dirty, too.”

In the U.S., that was easy enough to understand because for years this had been wrestling at its core. The Gold Dust Trio played off stereotypes—religious, ethnic, or nationalist—and casting the likes of Rikidōzan as a villain was simply how it worked. But in Japan? He couldn't accept such humiliation from
gaijin
. Surrender instead of victory meant reminding people of the Empire's failure. Of the Americans' bombs. The sun hadn't set on the Japanese, Rikidōzan intended to say through his karate chops; that's how he wanted to make people feel when he wrestled.

Pro wrestling and television produced prideful and harrowing moments for the Japanese. In the fall of 1955, a couple years after Rikidōzan captured the public's imagination, an eleven-year-old schoolboy was reportedly killed when a fellow student landed a dropkick while imitating the American style of wrestling. Networks, which were saturated with wrestling at the time, created public service announcements essentially telling kids to cool it.

A growing fervor around Rikidōzan, and Kimura's cemented reputation as one of Japan's best fighters, prompted the media to speculate about what might happen if they were matched as opponents instead of teammates. The wrestlers paid attention and agreed it was a good idea to entertain this question. There was money to be made, and for the advancement of Japanese pro wrestling the match needed to happen. So on December 22, 1954, the first pro wrestling heavyweight championship of Japan was contested at the Kuramae Kokugikan, the home of sumo from 1950 until 1985. Without nationalist overtones, the contest between Rikidōzan and Kimura turned out to be a straight power play. Shifting from work to shoot, the former sumo man
chopped the judoka to the floor, a double cross apparently justified by an errant kick from Kimura to Rikidōzan's groin.

“The first bout was going to be a draw,” Kimura told
Sports Graphic Number
, Japan's
Sports Illustrated
, in 1983. “The winner of the second will be determined by the winner of a rock-paper-scissors. After the second match, we will repeat this process. We came to an agreement on this condition. As for the content of the match, Rikidōzan will let me throw him, and I will let him strike me with a chop. We then rehearsed karate chop and throws. However, once the bout started, Rikidōzan became taken by greed for big money and fame. He lost his mind and became a mad man. When I saw him raise his hand, I opened my arms to invite the chop. He delivered the chop, not to my chest, but to my neck with full force. I fell to the mat. He then kicked me. Neck arteries are so vulnerable that it did not need to be Rikidōzan to cause a knockdown. A junior high school kid could inflict a knockdown this way. I could not forgive his treachery. That night, I received a phone call informing me that several, ten,
yakuza
are on their way to Tokyo to kill Rikidōzan.”

A strain of thought exists that suggests Rikidōzan's stabbing death in 1963 was the
yakuza
catching up with him for the betrayal of Kimura, who, to the surprise of no one, never received a chance to wrestle or fight the former sumo stylist again. As with most things having to do with Rikidōzan, who he was and what he did relative to his public perception were very different.

Rikidōzan and American Lou Thesz wrestled to a sixty-minute draw in Tokyo's first-ever “world title match” in 1957, scoring a record 87.0 rating on Japanese television—two of his matches rank in the top ten most-viewed programs in
the country's history and tens of thousands of people packed the streets to watch. His matches against Thesz, the only American wrestler Rikidōzan admitted to having respect for, represent the crowning achievements of his enormous ring success.

When Rikidōzan visited Los Angeles a year later to face Thesz—the best shooter in the world, a man chiseled from granite like Ed “Strangler” Lewis—the message was clear: If Rikidōzan could put up a fight against a man like Thesz, if he could beat Thesz and claim the NWA international heavyweight belt, which he did in L.A., well, he could do anything.

So too could the Japanese.

Not only had the face of Japanese strength adopted the American manner of wrestling, he adopted the American way of life and business. In L.A., Rikidōzan asked Gene LeBell, then twenty-six, to hold $15,000 cash in crisp $100 bills. “He said keep it until the match is over,” recalled LeBell. “I could've gone down to Mexico.” No matter what happened at the Olympic Auditorium that night, a top-of-the line Rolls-Royce was going to be purchased afterwards. Big money. Big cars. Big homes. Big deals. He operated in the legitimate and illegitimate consumerism that permeated Japan following the war. Rikidōzan put his name on nightclubs, hotels, condominiums, and bowling alleys. He also circulated among gangsters, and in some ways was one himself. When he drank too much he could become belligerent, a bully who ignored police summons.

Rikidōzan indulged in money, power, and influence. He was not who he was portrayed to be, and after his sudden death ten days before “Gorgeous” George Wagner passed
away in Los Angeles, the pro wrestling business in Japan was left in shambles. It is testament to Rikidōzan's massive influence that his death didn't bring down pro wrestling altogether. Instead, his protégés rode the tidal wave and established important legacies of their own.

ROUND FIVE

M
ore than a few Cassius Clay watchers suggested that because he moved around the ring so much, the sleek twenty-year-old might not trust his chin.

Due mostly to his locomotion, it's true, the attention-grabbing fighter hadn't been hurt during his first sixteen months as pro. The man's legs, so long as they were strong underneath him, were his first line of defense in that they got him to where he wanted to be faster than he could get touched. And yet this is where some critics conjured questions regarding Ali's potential.

Ali breezed to a 10–0 record and received more than enough press to justify a debut at the old Madison Square Garden to begin his 1962 campaign—but that wasn't successful or quick enough. A hold-the-reins development plan buffered against the Olympic champion's heavy competitive drive. On the subject of his tenth opponent, Munich-born Willi Besmanoff, Ali declared shame at having fought
an “unrated duck.” While Ali talked up champions Floyd Patterson and Sonny Liston he got in rounds with pugs like the squat Besmanoff, who finished his fifteen-year career with ninety-three bouts and a ledger of 51-34-8. The fight with Ali in Louisville was the German's seventy-ninth, and it marked one of eleven times he was stopped.

No one besides the six-foot-three kid himself—“a golden-brown young man,” A.J. Liebling observed in the March 1962 edition of the
New Yorker
, “big-chested and long-legged, whose limbs have the smooth rounded look that Joe Louis's used to have, and that frequently denotes fast muscles”—was eager to approach deep waters. Trainer Angelo Dundee knew superior talent could get a person by in some fields, but not boxing, not even for a specimen like Ali.

There was much to learn on the arduous road ahead.

The purpose of boxing is to inflict damage with your fists while avoiding strikes in return. During a career in prizefighting that's nearly impossible. Boxers are expected to be stout because almost all of them get caught. The game ones respond to trouble and fight on. The great ones do that then win.

For Ali's doubters it boiled down to, yeah, sure, the fancy-footed dancer's talent was obvious, but what kind of fighter was he really?

New York matchmaker Teddy Brenner lived up to his reputation by testing Ali's doggedness in the boxer's Garden debut, and Sonny Banks, a twenty-one-year-old converted southpaw puncher from Detroit, got the nod. Midway through the opening round, Banks snapped off a left hook that put Ali on the canvas and turned the Miami-based Dundee from tan to pale. Ali, a 5-to-1 favorite, needed only the count of two to regroup, shake off the cobwebs, and get to his feet.

“That was my first time knocked down as a professional,” Ali told the press on a twelve-degree February night in Manhattan. “I had to get up to take care of things after that because it was rather embarrassing, me on the floor. As you know, I think that I'm the greatest and I'm not supposed to be on the floor, so I had to get up and put him on out, in four as I predicted.”

Suckered by the illusion of landing a second money punch, a fight finisher, Banks became a predictable headhunter with that left hook. As he crumbled under Ali's angular fighting and incessant, buzzing jab, Banks, penned Liebling, “was like a man trying to fight off wasps with a shovel.”

Unsure of Ali's recuperative powers until Banks touched his charge's off button, Dundee was encouraged to see the type of pugilist he was dealing with. Critics, meanwhile, had new information to critique regarding the quality of Ali's chin.

For all of the whirlwind dancing and speed that defined so much of Ali's career, Banks showed that perhaps The Greatest's best boxing trait was standing when he had to. Ali did so many things better than most, and determining his “best” is difficult to pin down. The man's energy output in life was preternatural, yet he was as relaxed as any fighter—a fundamental reason for his legendary stamina and pace. A rare few boxers, never mind heavyweights, moved as Ali did. As Liebling noted in his
New Yorker
piece “Poet and Pedagogue,” which beautifully described the Banks fight, the “Louisville Lip” needed no help providing the press a quote, making news, or, as the story noted, coming up with rhymes. Less than two years removed from the Rome Olympics, Clay
was a business, the full package, well on his way, with financial backers and a support system, to an unparalleled life.

Beating Banks set in motion a pivotal stretch for the rising contender. Eighteen days passed between Ali's debut at MSG and the last night in February, a Wednesday, when he stopped another left-hooker, Don Warner, in four rounds in Miami. Ali predicted a finish in five, but because Warner wouldn't shake hands before the fight he said he deducted a round for poor sportsmanship. Highlighted by three bouts in Tinseltown, Ali fought a half dozen times in 1962 and enjoyed the run of L.A. during a period that shaped him as a boxer, showman, and person.

Vice President Richard Nixon dedicated the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena on July 4, 1959, barely a year before Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts accepted, inside the same building, the Democratic party's nomination for President of the United States of America. Kennedy bested Nixon in the fall of 1960 after a groundbreaking election that produced another sort of combat sport: televised presidential debates.

By the spring of '62, as Ali checked in to the Alexandria Hotel on 5th and Spring Street in Downtown L.A., Kennedy was entangled in the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam festered, the Cold War frosted, and the Cuban Missile Crisis was mere months away.

On top of everything else, the young president faced the pleas of L.A.-based pro wrestler “Classy” Freddie Blassie, who stood as the dominant West Coast champion after taking the belt from Frenchman Édouard Carpentier at
the Sports Arena in June 1961. The following month, Lou Thesz, who put over Japan's Rikidōzan in '58, did the same for Blassie while legendary boxer Jersey Joe Walcott served as the referee.

Blassie drove big television ratings in L.A. on Wednesday nights from 8:00 to 9:30
P.M.
on KCOP channel 13. So far as live sports went, boxing (and, ahem, wrestling) were easier and less expensive to broadcast than, say, baseball because they required only a couple cameras to sufficiently cover the action. From the start, TV and pro wrestling went as well together as any two things could, a fact that was partly responsible for Rikidōzan's success in Japan.

On March 28, 1962, within walking distance of Little Tokyo, L.A.'s strong Asian community filled the Olympic Auditorium hoping that the father of
puroresu
, Rikidōzan, would make history as the first Japanese to challenge for and subsequently win an American pro wrestling title.

Despite stomping Masahiko Kimura in Tokyo and possessing a wild-man reputation away from the ring, Rikidōzan wasn't well known in the West. Still, the new hero—such was Rikidōzan's stature at the time—received a far more honorable portrayal than most Japanese wrestlers after the Second World War. While Blassie's old tag team partner, Mr. Moto, played the role as untrustworthy, maybe scheming another Pearl Harbor, Rikidōzan, proud and seemingly forthright, was talked about as the sort of man who wouldn't stoop to hitting another when he was down.

Blassie the villain lost the belt to the pride of Japan when referee Johnny “Red Shoes” Dugan counted out the tanned American. Though many fans reviled Blassie and wanted him to lose, most viewers at home or at the Olympic Auditorium
couldn't have imagined him without the World Wrestling Association world heavyweight title. Everyone went wild as Rikidōzan won the first and only fall during an hour of wrestling. The time limit elapsed and Blassie flipped when famed ring announcer Jimmy Lennon raised Rikidōzan's hand, officially declaring him champion. Blassie hollered that the contest was supposed to be two of three falls, then he ripped the referee's shirt in half down the front.

“I've never seen such injustice in all my life,” Blassie howled at KCOP-13's Dick Lane. “I'm going to take this up with the World Wide Wrestling Association president and then I'm going to take it up with the athletic commission. If that isn't far enough I'm going to see my great friend President Kennedy because this was the dirtiest trick that's ever been pulled.”

Damaging investigations into pro wrestling during the 1930s forever altered the business on the West Coast, yet the California State Athletic Commission, mainly as a way of collecting fees, continued to treat the scripted stuff like a sport for many years. After going ballistic Blassie was summarily fined for manhandling Dugan, as if the rampage wasn't part of the show. He paid and said not a word. Even on his deathbed Blassie wouldn't break character, so there was no way he'd betray wrestling by stating on the record that the match and his reaction with the referee was an angle.

Born Frederick Kenneth Blassman to German parents in St. Louis, February 8, 1918, Blassie wrestled during World War II under the name “Sailor” Fred Blassie while stationed with the Navy at Port Hueneme, Calif. After the war he ditched the “Sailor” routine and toured the Midwest, but it
wasn't until returning to the West Coast's sandy beaches in Venice and Santa Monica that Blassie struck a chord with wrestling fans by playing the antagonist.

On April 23, 1962, the day Ali made his L.A. debut against George Logan, Blassie rematched Rikidōzan in a bout that captivated the Japanese. Even more startling than the nation's hysterical reaction to the contest was its response to Blassie, whose tactics stunned audiences. They simply hadn't seen anyone like him before. Plenty of American wrestlers made similar trips to Japan, gave Rikidōzan a go, then did the job and lost. For having the audacity to challenge Rikidōzan, they were generally well behaved and contrite. Not Blassie. He may as well have been a vampire, so scared were some Japanese.

Combined with a mastery of the televised interview, Blassie's profile as the heel (pro wrestling for “bad guy”) grew immensely in the early '60s by doing the kinds of things he did upon landing in Japan for the rematch. Pulling out a file, Blassie appeared to sharpen his teeth in front of cameras. The gimmick worked wonders. Flashes popped, the Japanese ate it up, yet like almost everything else about his profession it was a con. The wrestler had befriended an L.A. dentist who crafted false dentures for Blassie so he could do crazy things like rasp his “teeth” into fangs then bite into stuff.

Rikidōzan's second clash against Blassie in Tokyo made headlines for more than huge television ratings or a win for the local favorite. Several elderly Japanese reportedly died from heart attacks after Blassie appeared to bite Rikidōzan, draw blood, and spit it in the former sumo wrestler's face. This was absurd theater, an example of pro wrestling's
proverbial “crimson mask,” and, of course, Rikidōzan sawed his head with a razor blade to make it happen. Blassie, true to form, showed no remorse. The dead, he said, had it coming.

Blassie returned to L.A. for the final contest in his three-match series with Rikidōzan. Since the July 25 bout was held off television at the Olympic Auditorium, Rich Marotta, a wrestling-crazed kid from Burbank, Calif., pleaded with his father to take him. Marotta got his wish and the young fan's first sensory memories of the Olympic were born on a mild summer day.

Seated with his father in the top row of the 10,400-seat-capacity arena, Marotta was as far from ringside as he could have been, but he was there and being in the building watching from the nosebleeds was a far better proposition than sitting at home in the dark.

“It didn't smell good in the place,” remembered the L.A. native who made his way in life via boxing as a media personality. “It certainly wasn't a modern arena. I remember going into the bathroom and they had about two stalls and three urinals. And guys would just be peeing in the sinks. I had never seen anything like that. Guys just peeing in the sinks. It was dirty in there.”

The Olympic Auditorium, unlike today's arenas, was a fairly intimate setup. People in the building focused on the action in the ring, not big screens, so for twenty minutes Marotta excitedly watched through binoculars as the Japanese hero beat up the blond, tan American.

Because Marotta despised Blassie he screamed for Rikidōzan. After slamming Blassie hard into a turnbuckle, Rikidōzan charged, missed, and tumbled through the ropes
into the steel ringpost. Blassie snapped off a necktwister and mauled Rikidōzan until “there was blood everywhere,” said Marotta. “Johnny ‘Red Shoes' Dugan was the referee again. And finally ‘Red Shoes' Dugan stopped the match and awarded it to Blassie. So my first trip to the Olympic Auditorium turned out to be a terrible disappointment that way.”

Blassie's matches were less a choreographed wrestling match than a straight brawl, yet his series of matches with Rikidōzan proved important because they signified that Blassie's belt, the WWA title, was prestigious enough to attract challengers from faraway locales and was also worth hunting after. Therefore the Southern California wrestling territory run by Aileen Eaton and her son Mike LeBell was an entity to be reckoned with.