In America we are used to phony pro wrestling. In Japan I don't know if the pro wrestling is phony or not, but I know that the wrestlers there are good fighters who compete in real matches when they aren't doing pro wrestling.
One of the great Japanese pro wrestlers in history was Antonio Inoki. His first name obviously wasn't really Antonio. The guy was Japanese. He took the stage name Antonio out of respect for a western pro wrestler named Antonino Rocca. Maybe you remember Rocca. I do. I remember how he would jump in the air and slap his opponent with his feet.
In 1976 Inoki fought Muhammad Ali. That was after all of Ali's most famous fights, and Ali was past his prime. Ali would generally clown and dance and cover, and be given decisions that he didn't earn. It would be foolish to suggest that the Inoki-Ali fight was fixed because it was too boring to be fixed, and because Ali never would have agreed to such a script. So the fight was definitely not fixed.
Antonio Inoki easily and definitively defeated Ali. I saw the fight. Ali did exactly nothing. Inoki kept kicking him viciously in the legs. Inoki won every single round. As was usual in Ali's fights of that period, the judges were kind to him. They called it a draw. That was ridiculous. They didn't have the nerve to claim that Ali won, after Ali got kicked constantly and did nothing in return.
It was even more impressive for Inoki because the Ali camp took away almost all of Inoki's weapons before the fight. They made it illegal for Inoki to wrestle. They made it illegal for Inoki to kick while he was standing on his feet. Come on, no wrestling, not much karate?
Inoki went on to defeat Andre The Giant and Leon Spinks among others. I didn't see those but I suspect that they were real fights. Inoki beat everyone he faced. He had only one loss on his record, a loss that he quickly avenged by beating the guy in a rematch.
One of his students was Nobuhiko Takada, later to become the Hulk Hogan of Japan, its most popular wrestler. Takada became such a superstar that he enabled Japanese fight promoters to offer Rickson Gracie a million dollars to fight Takada - twice. The audience was there, and money could apparently be made even after paying Rickson his millions. Obviously Rickson Gracie beat the crap out of Takada both times. Rickson Gracie beat the crap out of everyone, including all his relatives, the entire Gracie clan.
One of Takada's students, Kazushi Sakuraba, was for a time the best pound for pound fighter in mixed martial arts after Rickson Gracie stopped competing. Sakuraba was known as the Gracie Hunter because he defeated some lesser Gracies, never getting the chance to fight Rickson because nobody would pay Rickson a million dollars to fight the guy.
This post, which is basically on Antonio Inoki, wouldn't be complete without mentioning that Inoki learned a lot of his moves from Karl Gotch, an American "catch wrestler" or "carny wrestler" or "hooker" (yes, hooker). Karl Gotch was a real fighter, the kind that modern pro wrestlers in the west imitate in their scripts. He had a lot of submission holds. Later generations influenced by Gotch would include Olympic star Judo Gene LeBell and current MMA star Josh "The Babyfaced Assassin" Barnett, also a catch wrestler. Antonio Inoki was a Japanese but American style catch wrestler with some karate thrown in. That was good enough to be perhaps the best fighter in the world in his day, when Rickson Gracie was just a pup.
lfbno7 posted on Jun 07, 2008
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Comments
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crybabylu said on Jun 08, 2008....
I caught that fight too in 1976 with Inoki and Ali, and it was a marvelous fight in that I got to watch Inoki's moves. Sad to say that Ali had several fights that left us wanting once he started his decline, but one will never really know when the parkison's started affecting him, will we? -
crybabylu said on Jun 08, 2008....
I met Ali in person. I forget the year, he was already retired and came through as a favor to our Golden Gloves Club, and everyone was so excited to get to see him. I was working the front desk at our local Holiday Inn Holidome, and he stayed there and the minute I saw him walk thru the door, I thought I was going to faint. -
lfbno7 said on Jun 08, 2008....
Ali left his original Muslim sect, moved on to the Sunni Muslims, and now is into the Sufis. I think the Sufis are interesting. They seem more spiritual and knowledgeable and less fanatic and maniacal than the others. They are deeply into the enneagram. -
toodiesel said on Jun 08, 2008....
Gonna have to disagree with you here and say Rickson Gracie is the Tito Ortiz of his generation (holds the distinction of champion, but ducks any legitimate competition). Looking through his confirmed 11 MMA bouts, I see his only quality win being against Funaki in 2000, when they were both well past prime. He got beat up by Zulu, even though Zulu is 13 years older than him, and somehow managed to sink in a RNC through the beating. He also habitually ducked Sakuraba, Rutten, and basically anyone in MMA that's had a half decent career/called him out.
Also, calling Renzo Gracie a "lesser Gracie" is insane, as he seems to be the only legitimate Gracie (doesn't ask for special treatment, will fight anyone regardless of pay).
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lfbno7 said on Jun 08, 2008....
I'd never insult Renzo Gracie. I am a huge fan of his. I trained with his partner Craig Kukuk. I went to Renzo's gym in Manhattan and had a conversation with him. He's the nicest and bravest man in MMA and lends class to the sport. Basically if I was a girl I'd be Renzo's groupie. I still can't figure out why he stopped to talk to me before his tournament because he was running around like a chicken without a head trying to get his very first tournament off the ground, he sees me, and stops dead, smiles, and starts a conversation. I'm not good looking either, and neither one of us is gay, but for some reason he just picked me out and started talking.
As for Rickson, Craig Kukuk used to talk about him a lot. He told us (his students) that Rickson used to line up all his relatives, his brothers and cousins and nephews, and beat the living shit out of them one after the other, like a chess grandmaster going from table to table checkmating other grandmasters. I was sufficiently brainwashed by Craig Kukuk, who was one of those guys getting the shit kicked out of him by Rickson on a regular basis. Craig Kukuk was the first American to ever get a black belt from the Gracie family.
Rickson is older than Royce. I wouldn't put Rickson down about anything. He can't come out of retirement now and beat up Fedor Emelianenko, but that's okay. When Gracies ruled the world of MMA, Rickson ruled the Gracies. He was the lion of the family. I don't think anyone could have taken him in his prime. And he wasn't basically a sport MMA star. He was a street fighter like his dad Helio. He was the ideal guy to have by your side in a street fight, toughest street fighter on the planet. Gracie jiu jitsu was not a sport. Helio was not a sport coach.
As for Sak and Basito, I think Bas would have had a chance against an over the hill Rickson, but I don't think Sak would have fared well at all. Rutten's stand up was really good. Sak could not have beaten the best groundfighter who ever lived because Sak wasn't the stand up fighter that Bas was. -
toodiesel said on Jun 08, 2008....
Sorry to keep posting, but I just don't get all the love for Rickson Gracie. If Rickson beat the crap out of all the Gracie's, Sakuraba was doing the exact same thing in fights that people have actually witnessed. Sure people tell stories about Rickson, but then why does he duck everyone that's a threat so actively? He was getting called out for years and years and, instead of actually doing something, he corners his brothers/cousins, watches them get beat, and pretends like he could beat their opponent, and then keeps on ducking them.
To me, Rickson is an 11-0 MMA fighter that always took fights that he had an incredible advantage in (be it weight, experience, etc..) and then decided to shut it down before he fought anyone world-class and got beat. Does that sound about right?
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lfbno7 said on Jun 09, 2008....
No it doesn't sound about right. I think you can do better than that. First of all, 11-0 is fantastic. Second, some of those 11 were pretty damn good. Third, Zulu did not beat up Rickson. Fourth, you and I both know that the 11-0 record just represents the tail end of his career. Fifth, the guy won a lot of tournaments, in jiu jitsu, wrestling, and sambo. Sixth, Japan paid him a million dollars to fight. That's got to tell you something. Seventh, people say that Paolo Filho may be the best jiu jitsu fighter in the world, and Filho said that he rolled with Rickson and that Rickson is by far the best jiu jitsu fighter in the world, far better than himself. Rickson must have toyed with him.
I know he hasn't been in the ring in a long time. The guy is 49 years old. He's like George Foreman at this point. Look at boxing. Would a world champion boxer fight for less than a million? These promoters make millions and then pay their fighters a few thousand. He insisted on getting his fair share of the receipts, which in his case is a million dollars, and he's got it about right. If a promoter is willing to fork over a fair amount of the money he takes in, Rickson is willing to appear. Dana White generally pays his fighters in the neighborhood of $3,000. What a joke. How can you live on that, if you have 3 or 4 fights a year. Food stamps. You'd make a lot more as a janitor and you'd have a health plan too.
Sak is a great guy and all, but you can't compare him to Rickson. It's like comparing Derek Jeter to Babe Ruth. When a guy has a God given gift like Rickson Gracie, you just have to hand it to him. The guy's fantastic. You just have to give it up to him.
There are many people today who put down Fedor Emelianenko. They say he's not even in the top five heavyweights in the world. They say he fights stiffs. It's the same type of thing. And a lot of the cause is the same as with Rickson. If a promoter like Dana White is going to insist that Fedor gives up sambo, well, Houston we have a problem. -
toodiesel said on Jun 09, 2008....
Hey, thanks for the reply.. sorry to keep dragging this out, but you hit a raw nerve. Hopefully some new post of yours will elicit my curiosity and I can get off this (do a writeup of Mauricio Shogun Rua, my all-time favorite fighter!)
As for Rickson, the argument to his validity is interesting because I always hear about how great he was, yet whenever I argue facts, I get hearsay and a lot of "he just is". I really want to understand the fascination about him, but I can't let a few things pass, I hope you can comment on them:
To be qualified as a great fighter, IMO, you have to beat legitimately great fighters, which is something I don't think Rickson can really lay claim to. Fedor's claim is that he's fought Big Nog 3x and CroCop 1x in their absolute prime, never losing, also beating competition such as Mark Hunt and Heath Herring.
Evidence at Rickson fighting actual top-flight competition seems to be fairly small (I'm sure if you counted street fights, you can tack on 400 wins to Chuck Liddell's record - the problem is Chuck doesn't go around actually counting those as wins). No one on Rickson's Sherdog Fight Finder list (the only fights where we don't have to take his word for it) I would say was considered the world's best fighter at the time. His biggest wins seem to be against a 45, and a 49(!) year old Zulu (Rickson is 13 years younger than Zulu), and Takada, who's proven to be an embarassment in MMA.
Also, cool to hear you're such a fan of Renzo, I am too. I've never met him, but in interviews he seems like such a joy to be around, he's wonderful on the PRIDE Decade DVD.
BTW, I love the blog, and am going through all your old blog posts
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lfbno7 said on Jun 09, 2008....
My all time favorite fighter is Fedor Emelianenko. I am really pleased with everything about him, his ground game, his standup, his gentle and kind personality, the fact that nobody ever beat him except some lucky guy who cut him long ago and Fedor won the rematch, his pudgy belly, his sleepy face. He actually reminds me of my father. Same kind and gentle face. Same pleasant personality. He and my father would have been great friends.
With Rickson, the main thing about his Sherdog record, his official record, is that he is Royce's big brother, not Royce's little brother. The official MMA records began with UFC 1. The only fights on Rickson's official record are after UFC 1, except that they condescended to add two Zulu fights from the 80s, who knows why. There really wasn't much of a mixed martial arts sport before UFC 1, but Rickson was out there fighting all over the place, undocumented, unofficial, because he's Royce's big brother, not his little brother, and his career preceded UFC 1.
So it's like taking Babe Ruth and starting with 1932 or something. Hey, the guy hit 60 homeruns in 1927. Sorry, we can't document that, it didn't happen. Babe Ruth was just some old fat guy with pretty good power, who claims to have called a homerun in a World Series, but really didn't, he's full of shit, he wasn't the best at anything, he's terribly overrated.
Rickson Gracie is the Babe Ruth of MMA. He's the greatest martial artist who ever lived. He would have kicked Bruce Lee's ass. How do I know? You can't know. You just piece whatever you have together and do the best you can. I give Craig Kukuk a lot of credence. He was an eyewitness to it. Basically, Rickson was a magician on the mat. He was God. He and Fedor, the all time gods of MMA.
I'm a baseball historian. I know about the players going back to 1871 and earlier. I've made statistical games about all of them. The greatest baseball player by far, head and shoulders above the rest, like some kind of magic ape playing with mere humans, was Babe Ruth. That's Rickson Gracie and Fedor, as far as I can tell from what I've heard. Why did the Japanese pay the guy a million dollars? This isn't charity.
Takada looked like nothing in those Rickson fights. He had a losing record outside of them too. But he beat Mark Coleman. He pulled a draw with a young Cro Cop. He couldn't have been too bad. It's just that Rickson made him look like shit. Others beat him too, granted, but Rickson took on a guy who beat Mark Coleman, and made him look like utter shit twice. Those fights weren't even competitive. They were executions. Just like Craig Kukuk said about the many times that Rickson fought Royce and Renzo and Rorion and Ralph and Royler and the rest of the clan. All executions, one after the other. It seems that Paolo Filho got executed by Rickson recently.
I don't know if Rickson right now could beat Spider Silva. Maybe Spider would knock him into the third row. The guy is pushing 50. But in Rickson's prime I think he'd submit Spider in the first round. I think if he fought Cro Cop 10 times, prime to prime, Rickson would go 10-0. I think Rickson in his prime would go 10-0 against Fabricio Werdum. I think he just had it. Best ground fighter who ever lived, with nobody close. Maybe a Bas Rutten would have knocked him out. Maybe. I'd want my money on Fedor over him. -
toodiesel said on Jun 10, 2008....
thanks for replying, a few remarks:
Takada was an embarassment not to MMA because of his record, but specifically because of the fight against Mark Coleman (which has been all but confirmed as being a fixed fight), and the draw against CroCop, he spent the entire time on the ground with no standups and was being booed lustily by the normally reserved japanese crowd. I'm surprised you haven't seen those fights...
As for beisbol, Babe Ruth is arguably the greatest player, but not "by far, head and shoulders above the rest". Any reasonable argument will slot in Willie Mays, and Barry Bonds, amongst others. As a baseball historian, it's surprising that you'd put Ruth on such an absolute pedestal.
I'm interested to hear who you consider the greatest boxer of all time to be.
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toodiesel said on Jun 10, 2008....
oh, also wanted to mention that the point about rickson's mma record || Babe Ruth > 1932 is a great one, and one that i'll certainly bring up to others.
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lfbno7 said on Jun 11, 2008....
I've done a lot of statistical work comparing baseball players of different eras, taking into account the year and league they played, and blending together their 10 best prime years to give an accurate sampling of what they were at their best, without over-emphasizing any one or two years. I did it in such a way that it evened the playing field between Dead Ball Era players and today's rabbit ball era players. My homerun results, to give you an idea, were as follows, placing everyone in the all time average homerun output year, which would be approximately 1950, raising the Dead Ball Era players towards that level and decreasing the modern players. It's an art, not a science, but I think my results are worthwhile, if you don't just negate the old timers by saying people are bigger and better now.
Top 15 homerun hitters of all time, based on their best 10 years, normalized to the all time average season, all on an even playing field, and all with the exact same number of plate appearances assumed:
35 homers: Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, Sammy Sosa.
36 homers: Harmon Killebrew, Ted Williams, Hank Greenberg, Willie Stargell.
37 homers: Mike Schmidt, Willie McCovey, Dave Kingman.
39 homers: Barry Bonds
41 homers: Lou Gehrig
42 homers: Jimmie Foxx
43 homers: Mark McGwire
60 homers: Babe Ruth
No, that was not a typo. Add in his tremendous OBP and SLG, and you have a creature of a different species. And for those who talk about Willie Mays's baserunning and fielding making up the difference (Mays didn't make the top 15 in homers), that's absurd. Babe Ruth was definitely a good enough pitcher to make the Hall of Fame at that position, so you can take Willie Mays's running and fielding and shove them. Willie is the single most overrated baseball player in the history of the game. He was great, but not in the same league as Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, or the great one, Babe Ruth.
I also did statistical work using the Pete Palmer stat Batting Runs, or Linear Weights. It's a great system that places a numerical value on each single, double, triple, homer, walk, HP, out. It enables you to compare the value of a power hitter to a singles hitter accurately, determining how many runs they are good for. Babe Ruth is by far the greatest on that scale, with Willie Mays coming in below Mantle as a hitter, and nowhere near Ruth. The runs that Mays saved as a fielder and the runs that Mays created as a baserunner are negligible. They have been measured and they are insignificant. He was no Bill Mazeroski in the field. Mazeroski was the best fielder who ever lived, according to the baseball statisticians, and saved quite a few runs for his team. Mays saved a few, but not enough to mention.
Willie was a hot dog. Great baserunner, great fielder, but more than that, great self promoter. He'd do outrageous things on the bases that, when you come down to it, didn't add up to much. He'd loosen his cap so it would fall off on a regular basis when he chased a fly ball. I'm not saying I wouldn't want him on my team, but I'd rather have a bigger hitter if I could, and I could do without the hot dogging. He's maybe three quarters the player that Ruth was. Barry Bonds was A LOT better than Mays. Ted Williams was better than Bonds. Babe Ruth was a lot better than Williams. According to my stats.
I didn't see Takada fight anyone except Rickson. Was it so obvious that Coleman threw the fight? I'll see if I agree. I will watch it on You Tube. I have an open mind to the possibility that Takada sucks.
Greatest boxer of all time? I'd have to name a few and leave it at that. I'd consider Muhammad Ali, Larry Holmes, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano. I don't know which more modern boxers to put in that class. Jack Johnson's era wasn't technically all that great, with those low hands down by their stomachs. Jack Dempsey hardly defended his title and had a lot of trouble with his contemporaries. You can't be too sure that Foreman or Frazier would be easily handled by the big four that I mentioned, so it gets into A beats B, B beats C, C beats A. Maybe Foreman and Frazier could have taken Louis and Marciano, who knows. But the four I mentioned had very long reigns at the top, which counts for me. I think Holmes may generally be underrated and deserves consideration. Also, Marciano was a cruiserweight, so did he really have the size and power to take on the bigger guys? He was damn good though. Hard to compare. I'm so out of it since I got disgusted with all the alphabet organizations in boxing and stopped paying attention to it. -
lfbno7 said on Jun 11, 2008....
I think the Coleman Takada fight was fixed. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.