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

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“I remember the air-conditioning wasn’t working,” Wagenheim said. “As soon as we got in the theater I started feeling a little feverish, a little clammy and sweating, and you’re not quite yourself. The place was packed.”

Unlike Wagenheim, Kevin Iole continued to love wrestling into his high school days, especially the McMahonowned WWWF (World Wide Wrestling Federation). And for Ali to insert himself in that world made the closed-circuit event a must-see. Iole took a seat in the small ballroom at Monzo’s Howard Johnson’s in Monroeville, Pa., as the summer prior to his senior year was getting started. “I didn’t think for one second it would be a real thing,” recalled the prolific boxing writer who, while working for the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2004, was among the first American newspaper reporters to give the fledgling sport of mixed martial arts his attention. “I thought it’d be a work and we’d get a kick out of it, and who knew what Ali would do or say.”

Noted handicapper Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder explained that he was unwilling to post a line on the fight, highlighting the difficulty in guaranteeing the bona fides of such a spectacle. “How do I know it’s anything but an exhibition?” he wrote in his newspaper column on June 3. “I’ve been bombarded by karate lovers who insist Ali doesn’t have a chance, that no fighter can beat a wrestler.” At the fabled Olympic Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles, bookies ignored history and installed the boxer as a 3-to-1 favorite.