Antonio Inoki, Japanese Wrestler and Improbable Diplomat, Dies at 79

“Perhaps last summer I was too serious,” Mr. Inoki told The New York Times in a regretful interview the next year. “I was doing my best to win. It wasn’t a fake fight, or it would have been more interesting.”

After Ali died in 2016, The Times ran a retrospective article about the bout: “Ali’s Least Memorable Fight.”

One expert commentator saw it differently. Conor McGregor, the mixed martial artist who had fought the undefeated boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2017, said at a news conference before their bout that he had studied the Ali-Inoki match. Of particular interest was a moment in the sixth round when Ali fell, and Inoki got on top of him before the referee could separate the two.

“If that moment in time was let go for five more seconds, 10 more seconds, Inoki would have wrapped around his neck or his arm or a limb, and the whole face of the combat world would have changed right there and then,” Mr. McGregor said.

Kanji Inoki was born on Feb. 20, 1943, in the Japanese port city of Yokohama. He adopted “Antonio” as a wrestling name. When he was a teenager, his family moved to Brazil. Rikidozan, a professional wrestler in Japan, visited Brazil, met Kanji and became his mentor, guiding him into a career as a popular Japanese wrestler.

Information about Mr. Inoki’s survivors was not immediately available.

The Ali episode did no long-term damage to Mr. Inoki’s popularity in his homeland, where he became a presence in advertising, pitching everything from Tabasco sauce to pinball parlors.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/02/obituaries/antonio-inoki-dead.html