The Greatest and Wrestling

“You ever see the wrasslers? How there’s always a good wrassler, and a bad one? And he sticks his finger in his eye, and the guy shakes it off. In two minutes, his eyes clear up. And he sticks it in again, and he hits his back….and everybody hate him. He’ll win the first round. And in the second round, the good fella wins and that’s what everybody come to see: the bad villain be beat up. I like to be the villain.”

-Muhammad Ali

It is the fourth week of June 1961. Two athletes who are starkly different for the moment, but won’t be for long, are on the bill for a popular radio station in Las Vegas. Their careers have come to a fitting intersection, both of them there to promote their latest endeavors which will take place at the same building just three nights apart. One of them, young, fit, if somewhat reserved, stands off to the side. He is mesmerized the same as everyone else in the room by what he sees and hears. At the microphone, the other, older, heavier, but not lost on animation, is in the midst of a bombastic tirade. He yells endlessly of his superiority to the listeners at home. He is a television icon, one of the highest paid sports figures in the country, and he knows what he is doing as he uses his mouth to fill the Las Vegas Convention Center. Back standing in the wings, the younger man can only imagine what would happen to him should he ever be so brash. He had done everything by the book, achieved things in competitive sports that this loudmouth probably couldn’t imagine, and he was only halfway welcome in his own hometown. Then the interview finishes and the station goes off air, and “Gorgeous” George Wagner, a 46-year-old who will drink himself to death in less than three years, takes a breath, gets up, and invites Olympic champion Cassius Clay to a wrestling show.

------------------------------------------------                     ----------------------------------------------

The boxing event at the Convention Center in Las Vegas on June 26, 1961 went pretty much as planned. In his seventh pro fight, Cassius Clay cruised to a unanimous decision victory over 15-11-1 Hawaiian journeyman Duke Sabedong. There was a first round KO on the undercard, Sabedong made things at least a bit tense by once hitting on the break, and the mostly tame crowd at the Convention Center did get a peek at a planned future champion, but it was an overall uneventful night at the fights.

The wrestling show three nights earlier was a spectacle. Clay was there as a fan. In the main event, he watched as a raucous, much larger crowd screamed for Gorgeous George’s head while he and Freddie Blassie wrestled to a draw. The two larger-than-life stars manipulated the emotions of the packed house with their every expression. But that’s not all Clay saw that night. He saw the Torres Brothers, Alberto and Ramon, minorities like himself, welcomed by thousands as fan favorites. He saw the “Zebra Kid” George Bollas, a legitimate NCAA wrestling champion, don striped spandex and a full mask - whatever it took to stand apart. His eyes were opened to a world in which if you evoked emotion, positive or negative and for any reason, you were worth something. Backstage after the matches, “Gorgeous” drove the point home by telling the gold medalist the secrets of the trade to his face, "A lot of people will pay to see someone shut your mouth. So keep on bragging, keep on sassing, and always be outrageous."

Also on the card the night a young Cassius Clay  went to  see Gorgeous George.

It may have been have been Muhammad Ali’s most influential experience with professional wrestling, but it certainly wasn’t his first. Victor Bender has been a friend of Ali’s since they were 12-year-old classmates in Louisville.

“He was fan” remembered Bender. “Of course, he loved wrestling, and I liked wrestling. Wrestling was heavy in Louisville, Kentucky at one time.”

The Columbia Gym, the very place Muhammad Ali was introduced to boxing in 1954, was a haven for pro wrestling throughout much of his childhood. Promoter Heywood Allen, and later Francis McDonough Jr., ran shows there and at the Jefferson County Armory in the 1940’s and 50’s – both venues less than four miles away from Ali’s childhood home. Featured wrestlers included Bill Longston, Bobby Managoff Jr., Lou Thesz, Freddie Blassie, Primo Carnera, “Whipper” Billy Watson, Vic Christy, Mae Young, and “Negro Champion” Buddy Jackson.

Nowadays, most are probably familiar with Ali’s boisterous 1974 quip, “I done something new for this fight: I done wrestled with an alligator.” What they may not know is that five days after the champ’s fifth birthday, Gil Woodworth caused quite a stir in the Louisville area, drawing almost 8,000 people to the Armory to in fact watch him wrestle against a live, seven foot long alligator.

Bender couldn’t specifically recall the two of them ever attending one of these big events but offered, “That might have been something our parents would’ve brought us to.” They would have had plenty of opportunities. In addition to their proximity to the buildings, a card on December 18, 1947 headlined by Bill Longston versus the Volga Boatman let the first five hundred neighborhood children in for free. A few years later, the Louisville Police ran a wildly successful benefit wrestling show headlined by Lou Thesz versus Enrique Torres that welcomed in another 500 orphans and underprivileged children as their guests.

Distance from Ali's childhood home to the Columbia Gym, where he was introduced to boxing by a local police officer in 1954. The Columbia Gym also frequently hosted wrestling events in the 1940's and 50's. 

If Gorgeous George was a revolution in wrestling, a similar force in boxing was bound to follow. The two avenues have a long interconnected history, and Muhammad Ali is far from the first pugilist to have a reverence for wrestling not shared by many of his sport’s non-competing enthusiasts. Whether it be as special referee, training partner, wrestler, or performer, the list of boxers that have done pro wrestling includes Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, “Jersey” Joe Walcott, Primo Carnera, Leon Spinks, Chuck Wepner, Joe Frazier, Mike Tyson, and Floyd Mayweather. 

Most of these athletes have expressed having a passion for wrestling even away from it paying them. There exists a mutual respect between fighters and wrestlers that has survived professional wrestling evolving to be a hybrid of sport and theater. In any sport, there is the fight and there is the show, and it seems that when an athlete’s body becomes their business, as it did for Ali most especially when he started talking, respect grows immensely for the latter. So it is that the fighter is respected for the rawness of his fight, and the pro wrestler for the keenness of his show.

After that weekend in Las Vegas, Muhammad Ali took his rawness and keenness and became the biggest star boxing has ever seen. Much of what he did during this time was more “pro wrestling” than it was boxing. He started calling rounds and writing his opponents poems. He fell in love with microphones and, just like Gorgeous George before him, boasted of his good looks and started giving enticing ultimatums (George: “If I lose, I'll crawl across the ring and cut my hair off!” Ali: “If this bum goes over five rounds, I won’t return to the United States for thirty days. That’s final!”). He always thought the race war was a money angle. During the lead up to his 1975 fight against Chuck Wepner, he found time to approach his real life challenger privately and suggest, “I want you to call me a nigger.”

The Human Orchid himself.

The original professional wrestling was almost destined to come back into Ali’s life at some point. How exactly it came about - and really every detail there afterward - is both murky and perpetually disputed, but the year was 1976.

After two heavyweight crowns and four mega-fights, Ali was running through a string of tomato cans and, perhaps looking to land himself another, made the characteristic offhand comment to some Japanese officials, “Isn’t there any oriental fighter who will challenge me? I’ll give him one million dollars if he wins.” The challenge got back to the Far East and blew up in their press. But in Japan, the fighter with the money and the name to actually make it happen wasn’t a boxer – he was a professional wrestler.

Antonio Inoki was a student of Rikidozan, who was to some extent the equivalent of Gorgeous George in Japan (in the way of the era he wrestled in and popularizing the sport, not flamboyance). As a wrestler, Inoki was a hero to the Japanese people and every bit as revered in his country as Ali was in the United States. He was also always a go-getter and trailblazing promoter. Fired from one Japanese wrestling organization in 1971 for planning a takeover, he started his own, New Japan Pro Wrestling, which is today the most prominent wrestling company in the country. He also brought the first pro wrestling cards to the Soviet Union, Taiwan, China, and North Korea. If Vince McMahon and Hulk Hogan are two sides of the same coin in America, Antonio Inoki is on both sides of the coin in Japan.

Inoki pursued a match with Ali relentlessly. Eventually, his backers came up with six million dollars (and another four million for Inoki) that did the trick. The match was set for June 26, 1976 in Tokyo, Japan. Unfortunately for the history books, everybody wants to be a part of a ten million dollar professional wrestling match.

In addition to Inoki’s entourage and financial backers, and the Nation of Islam on Ali’s side, there was Bob Arum promoting for Ali, Vince McMahon Jr. brought in to make up for what Arum didn’t know about promoting professional wrestling specifically, and a contingent from McMahon’s rival American Wrestling Association who would also assist in the promotion. Amongst them, to this day, nobody can really tell you what happened with Muhammad Ali versus Antonio Inoki.

What did transpire on June 26 (June 25 in the United States) was not a traditional pro wrestling match, and is widely talked about as a black eye on Muhammad Ali’s legacy. The best, most credible, most believable accounts go something like this:

For the duration of the build-up, at least Muhammad Ali was under the impression that he had signed up for professional wrestling – albeit he was to play the “boxer.” It would be pro wrestling in the spirit of what Gorgeous George or Bill Longston had performed. Then, on the day or days leading up to the match, things changed. Someone got cold feet. One party had second thoughts.

One report has it that Antonio Inoki had never planned anything to be “faked” from the minute he saw Ali’s challenge, and that this only became apparent when Ali approached and asked, “When’s rehearsal?” Another suggests that Ali had agreed to a plan, and then at the last minute either he or his backers decided he couldn’t go through with it and that a fight was the only way to go. All the confusion led to two separate camps desperately trying to protect the images of the proud men they represented rather than work together to put on the show they had promised. Supposedly, rules were haphazardly thrown together for a legitimate “mixed match.”

These rules, of course, severely limited what the man going up against the American Heavyweight Boxing Champion could do. Ali the boxer could box, but Inoki the wrestler could not wrestle. The result was a bout that saw Antonio Inoki lie on his back for fifteen rounds and viciously kick up at Ali’s legs. Muhammad Ali threw six punches. The fight, which was deemed a draw, was a dud, and both the live crowd and those watching on close-circuit television around the world walked away unhappy.

Had dealings been left to just Ali and Inoki (and perhaps Vince McMahon Jr., who at one point allegedly drew up a plan for the match that won Ali over), it is possible that, not only the match itself could have been entertaining, but the whole saga could not be as widely viewed as an embarrassment all these years later. Because in the whole confusing period, one thing was actually pretty clear to see: Muhammad Ali was having fun.

Muhammad Ali, "Classy" Freddie Blassie, and a young Vince McMahon Jr.

When asked what “The Champ” was really like, corner man and friend Drew Bundini Brown once replied simply and definitively, “like a big kid.” He seemed to exude this childlike nature more genuinely in his pro wrestling appearances than he ever did at the podium selling fights. He rarely ever conceded being beatable in boxing, even after losses, but after riling up one WWWF crowd in Philadelphia, he allowed the massive Gorilla Monsoon to pick him up, give him the airplane spin, and slam him to the mat where he then laid dazed and in defeat as the crowd went wild.

In addition to the public confrontation with Monsoon, Ali had two exhibition “boxer vs. wrestler” matches, and made numerous appearances with wrestlers during the lead up to the match with Inoki. Kenny Jay, a mainstay in the American Wrestling Association throughout the 1970’s, was Ali’s opponent for one of those exhibitions. He insists that on the night of that match (which he describes as the highlight of his career), he showed up, got knocked out by Ali, took some time in the dressing room, and then left, and was only ever face to face with The Champ in the ring. Even still, in that short span Ali’s passion was obvious.

“Yeah, you could (tell he loved wrestling)” said Jay. “He did really hit it off with Freddie Blassie, who became his manager. The other one I saw him with a lot was Dick ‘The Bruiser.’”

“Classy” Freddie Blassie did in fact serve as Ali’s manager and coach during much of this period (because, as Ali was fond of saying, “he wrote the book on dirt.”). He was also a figure that appeared in every stage of Muhammad Ali’s fascination with pro wrestling, from wrestling mere blocks from the heavyweight champion’s childhood home, to that influential card in Las Vegas, to appearing with him on talk shows to help hype the bout in Japan. In Joe Frazier, Ali met a match in the ring, but he never found one on the mic – in boxing, at least. Thus the reason it was ever more striking to watch Ali have to turn his face from the cameras and host of the Tonight Show McLean Stevenson (guest hosting for Johnny Carson) in order to not be seen cracking up as Blassie went on and on, unflinchingly, much the same as the great heavyweight had seen done once before at a certain radio station in Las Vegas.

Muhammad Ali was a perfect fit in this parallel universe, and by all accounts he loved every minute of being there.

Then with the Inoki match it ended, and it was back to the cruelest sport once more.

Whether ultimately real or worked, Muhammad Ali’s legs took a real, serious beating in the fight with Inoki. Many pundits theorize now that it took something from the rest of his boxing career, that he was never the same, and they lazily tie this unfortunate occurrence to pro wrestling. It is as if to say that had he not signed on for something as ridiculous as a wrestling sideshow in the first place, he would have been a better fighter for his next few fights, or further, he would not have taken quite the same level of punishment he did in the final stage of his career. This is a perverse argument, because it wasn’t pro wrestling that got his legs kicked to shreds. In fact, quite the opposite, it was the same type of foolish pride that resulted in him not being able to cut a wrestling promo today.

Ali’s boxing career stretched another five years, in which time he lost his titled, regained it for an unprecedented third time, retired, and then came back, before retiring again. The end, as it often times is, was ugly. He made no appearances in pro wrestling during this period.

If sporadically, he has kept up an association since his retirement from the ring. In 1985, he gladly accepted the call from the man introduced to him by Bob Arum nine years before, Vince McMahon Jr., to be a special guest referee for the inaugural WrestleMania and its main event of Hulk Hogan and Mr. T versus “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. During the match, he was as enthusiastic as ever as he once more jumped up into the ring, bounced around, worked the crowd, and took swings at the bad guys.

He made several appearances for World Championship Wrestling in the 1990’s, including sitting ringside for the Hulk Hogan versus Ric Flair “retirement” steel cage match in 1994. He appeared with Diamond Dallas Page for the cover of their magazine in 1998.

Muhammad Ali also continues a lifelong friendship with - of all people - Antonio Inoki. In 1995, Ali was again ringside for pro wrestling when Inoki brought him to the card he had put together for Kim Jong-Il’s Pyongyang International Sports and Cultural Festival for Peace. The wrestling portion saw nearly 400,000 people (over two nights) forced to attend by the North Korean government – the largest audience for wrestling ever. Three years later, Inoki invited his old foe to his retirement match and the two embraced in the ring after Inoki had disposed of Don Frye.

Old friends.

Now as Muhammad Ali enters his seventies, timelines are being composed of everything “The Greatest” ever did – who he fought, what he said, his views on race, his cultural impact, his work for peace, etc. His time in professional wrestling should not be overlooked. It sparked him to talk, which made him a hero. And more intimately, no one should discount the things that are important to important people.

“He learned from some of the wrestlers how to entertain” finished friend Bender. “He became very active and vocal about selling boxing like the wrestlers sell wrestling.”

Indeed, he did. Muhammad Ali took a lot from professional wrestling, and gave a lot back, too. For many, this counterpart to sports, this pageantry as a means for promotion, Gorgeous George and his strut, will never be anything more than a lowly carnival act. Fans of how big fights got in the seventies, or Muhammad Ali the character, however, are in this case simply just forced to tip their caps. Such is the legacy of The Greatest and Wrestling.




Acknowledgments: I owe a big thanks to both Victor Bender and Kenny Jay, who were gracious enough to talk with me about Muhammad Ali and pro wrestling. The historical pieces of the work were only made possible by J. Michael Kenyon's cataloging of wrestling results and Tim Hornbaker and his awesome website LegacyofWrestling.com.


The following web addresses were also crucial to the completion of this post:


http://boxrec.com/
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1114630/index.htm
http://percivalafriend.com/friend111201.htm
http://www.soulofamerica.com/louisville-historic-sites.phtml
http://blog.keia.org/2012/02/wrestling-with-diplomacy-in-north-korea/

As with any of the posts here on the blog, please feel free to e-mail me any comments, suggestions, information, or just to talk wrestling at heartpunchwrestling@yahoo.com. Also follow me at Twitter.com/ElliottMarquis for updates on upcoming stories.