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Antonio Inoki

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Antonio Inoki (アントニオ猪木), real name Kanji Inoki (猪木寛至, born February 20, 1943) is a retired Japanese professional wrestler who now resides in California. His stage name was inspired by Antonino Rocca, a legendary professional wrestler.

Career

Inoki was discovered by the great Rikidozan at the age of 17 while he was living in Brazil. He was brought back to Japan for the Japanese Wrestling Association as Rikidozan's disciple. One of his dojo classmates was Giant Baba. After Rikidozan's death, Inoki toiled under the taller Baba's shadow until he joined the original Tokyo Pro Wrestling in 1966. Returning to JWA in late 1967, he was made Baba's partner and the two dominated the tag team ranks as the "B-I Cannon", winning the NWA International tag team belts four times.

Fired from JWA in late 1971 for planning a takeover of the promotion, Inoki founded New Japan Pro Wrestling in 1972. His first match as a New Japan wrestler was against the legendary Karl Gotch.

Inoki was a pioneer of mixed martial arts. In the 1970s, he fought Willie Williams of Kyokushin Karate, Olympic judo gold medalist Willem Ruska and WBA World Heavyweight Champion Muhammad Ali.

Antonio Inoki has faced many opponents from all dominant disciplines of combat from various parts of the world, such as Pakistan in his match against Akram Pahalwan. A rumor surrounding his fight with Ali was that Ali's camp feared that Inoki would turn the fight into a shoot, so the fight was restricted by Ali's camp to strike rules only, with no suplexes and slams allowed. Ali landed a total of six punches to Inoki and Inoki kept to his back in a defensive position almost the full duration of the match, hitting Ali with a low kick repeatedly. The bout ended in a draw, 3-3.

Inoki is known to have had worked matches doing the "Final Countdown" series (which prepared him for his pro wrestling retirement in 1998). The match with Muhammad Ali in 1976 was originally supposed to have been worked as well, but Inoki wanted to have a real fight which led the Ali camp to restrict the fight to striking rules only. Beside these, most of Inoki's mixed martial arts matches are considered real and legit.

One of the few professional wrestlers whose career lasted longer than 35 years, Inoki established the "strong style", using stiffness and realistic maneuvers to make professional wrestling appear more legit and real. Shoot style wrestling arose from Inoki's "strong style".

Many of Inoki's disciples, including the original Tiger Mask Satoru Sayama,Masakatsu Funaki, Nobuhiko Takada, Minoru Suzuki, Akira Maeda, Shinsuke Nakamura and Kazuyuki Fujita, among others, have had success in the real fighting competition of mixed martial arts, and the roster of NJPW is known to have pioneered mixed martial arts federations including RINGS, Shooto, PRIDE, and Pancrase.

It is due to Antonio Inoki that fighters like Naoya Ogawa, Josh Barnett, Walid Ismail, and Ryoto Machida have actively represented NJPW in mixed martial arts events giving notoriety to it and professional wrestling.

Inoki continues to bring fighters like Mark Coleman, Quinton Jackson, Dan Bobbish to professional wrestling ring for organisation of Professional Wrestling Events like the HUSTLE, which is the equivalent of Wrestlemania in Japan.

Antonio Inoki also organises Mixed Martial Arts events like "NJPW Ultimate Crush" and "Jungle Fight", showing traditional professional wrestling matches and actual, real MMA matches on the same card. Some of the major attractions of these events involve the best of NJPW vs. World renowed fighters in actual, real MMA matches, for example Josh Barnett vs. Jerry Armbriz, Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Jan Nortje, etc.

Many Of Inoki's events are co-promoted by MMA federation like K-1, most notably the Inoki-Bom-Ba-Ye, as a combination of professional wrestling and mixed martial arts side by side at the same card.

Antonio Inoki's Inoki Dojos are also known to have cross-trained wrestlers like Ken Shamrock, Kazushi Sakuraba, Chris Benoit and Samoa Joe.

Trivia

  • Inoki was married to actress Mitsuko Baisho from 1971 to 1987. Initially the wedding was going to be paid by JWA, but JWA fired him in late 1971, so Inoki had to form NJPW to keep feeding his new family. Inoki and Baisho have a daughter, Hiroko (who uses her father's surname).
  • Antonio Inoki started the Universal Fighting-arts Organization.
  • Antonio Inoki was the first pro-wrestler in the world to be elected as congressman of a country.
  • Antonio Inoki was the first government official from western or democratic nations to have a political meeting with Fidel Castro of Cuba.
  • Antonio Inoki met with Saddam Hussein for the release of prisoners from Iraq before the Gulf War. As is the traditional gift for a visiting head-of-state, Saddam gave Inoki a pair of golden swords.

Championships and accomplishments



Pro Wrestling Illustrated (PWI) ranked him # 5 of the 500 best singles wrestlers during the "PWI Years" in 2003. PWI also ranked him twice in the best tag teams of the PWI Years. He was ranked # 12 with Tatsumi Fujinami and # 44 with Hulk Hogan.

Tournaments Won

  • JWA 11th Annual League
  • NWA 1st Tag League with Kantaro Hoshino
  • NWA 2nd Tag League with Seiji Sakaguchi
  • NJPW 1st Annual World League
  • NJPW 2nd Annual World League
  • NJPW 1st Annual MSG League
  • NJPW 2nd Annual MSG League
  • NJPW 3rd Annual MSG League
  • NJPW 4th Annual MSG League
  • NJPW IWGP League 1984
  • NJPW IWGP League 1986
  • NJPW Pre-Japanese Championship
  • NJPW 1st Annual MSG Tag League with Bob Backlund
  • NJPW 3rd Annual MSG Tag League with Hulk Hogan
  • NJPW 4th Annual MSG Tag League with Hulk Hogan
  • NJPW 5th Annual MSG Tag League with Tatsumi Fujinami
  • NJPW Japan Cup Tag Team League 1986 with Yoshiaki Fujiwara
  • NJPW Japan Cup Six Man Elimination Tag League 1988 with Riki Choshu & Kantaro Hoshino


Preceded by:
Bob Backlund 		WWE Champions Succeeded by:
vacant (willingly forfeited)
Preceded by:
None 		IWGP World Heavyweight Champions Succeeded by:
vacant (injured)
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