Читать книгу Ali vs. Inoki. The Forgotten Fight That Inspired Mixed Martial Arts and Launched Sports Entertainment онлайн

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Seven minutes before Ali and Inoki stood in the ring together, the first images from the Nippon Budokan were beamed by satellite to the rest of the world. Closed-circuit sites—predominantly movie houses with stadiums and arenas sprinkled in—filled with people hoping for a great show on a Friday night.

In San Jose, Calif., Meltzer and some high school friends put the finishing touches on a debate that had raged for weeks. “Beforehand we didn’t know if it would be real or not,” said Meltzer, who, forty years later, is a highly respected pro wrestling and combat sports journalist. “The prevailing view in the media was that it was going to be a fake pro wrestling match.”

Was this thing on the up-and-up? Could a boxer, even someone as great as Ali, really beat a wrestler? Oh my God, what if Inoki takes Ali to the ground and hurts him? These discussions played out wherever people congregated to take in the action.

Jeff Wagenheim spent fifteen dollars on a ticket to watch at the Liberty Theater in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Having graduated high school a week before the match, Wagenheim, who went on to cover mixed martial arts as a reporter for Sports Illustrated, had mostly matured past the wrestling fandom of his childhood. Yet after hearing of the Ali–Inoki pairing, he and a friend decided to see what the noise was about.