Antonio Inoki and Billy Robinson Can Do It All Night

There is nothing special about wrestling for an hour.

I say this knowing that there’s a certain kind of fetishism for the days of one-hour broadways and the dudes who did them, a cult of fans who bemoan the way wrestling has deemphasized the epic, real sports pace of a 70s/80s title matches to focus, instead, on pyrotechnic displaces of acrobatic athleticism. This kind of hour long classic, the one that lives in the mind, is what I’m worried the AEW Championship reign of MJF will be, as he is a “classic wrestler” who has absolutely earned the quotation marks I’m throwing around “classic wrestler.”

There are, I believe, two truths to the hour long draw that anybody embarking upon one, fan or talent, must acknowledge. The first of those truths is that it is a gimmick, the same as a ladder match or a cage match. An hour long draw is a kind of match, which means that it has its own meaning and way of expression. Obviously, that is the fact that neither participant actually wins. This keeps the belt with the champion, the heat of the participants around where it was, depending on the booking and the finish.

This isn’t an easy thing to accomplish, which seems to contravene my belief that it’s not special to go an hour, but the second truth to the genre is this: it takes two exceptional talents to make meaning with that amount of time. There aren’t many wrestlers capable of doing that, and many of those who are — Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart, or Kazuchika Okada and Kenny Omega — end up sabotaged when their booker decides that stamina is the key to a broadway and not ideas.

Billy Robinson and Antonio Inoki are blessed to be from another time, where an hour long 2/3 falls match was a common stipulation for title bouts, and crowds were used to draws because they kept heel foreigners relevant, a monster left unvanquished.

This match has an interesting structure for a 2/3 falls contest, with a long first fall that dominates the majority of the time limit, a second fall that doesn’t exactly see Inoki, down one fall with the clock dwindling, panic, and an extremely brief third fall where both men get their shots but end things inconclusively.

The first fall is where the action is. It is easy to think of an hour long draw as a match of more normal length stretched out, a 20-minute match put into the taffy puller. Well, it’s not. In the first fall, Inoki and Robinson test each other, there is a lot of feeling out, but they’re in constant motion, trying to hook holds and goad the other into a trap. The struggle is unreal, as each man tries to outmaneuver the other not for the sake of a pinfall or an inescapable submission, but for an extra inch or two of finger or foot or neck to manipulate. It’s grueling.

And then Billy Robinson slaps Inoki.

This, too, is part of the game. Billy Robinson is choosing to wrestle like a jerk, and he will face the consequences for it, but this slap allows the two to open things up emotionally and in terms of what they do. Robinson, for his part, hits a brutal looking belly to belly suplex over the top ropes, as well as one of his signature backbreakers, one of the most gorgeous wrestling moves ever.

For me, the most entertaining segment of the match is the long stretch where Inoki holds Robinson in a headscissors. I didn’t break out the timer, but for at least three minutes, Antonio Inoki had Billy Robinson’s head in a vice. What sucked me into the sequence was so minor, too, as Robinson’s first escapee attempt sees him accidentally touch the bottom rope. Rather than take the rope break, he stays in the hold, trying to find a way out that’s less cheap, I guess. None of it works, not the pin attempts, not the fancy lad World of Sport escapes — Billy Robinson is trapped, and even though you can practically feel his ears cauliflowering as the seconds tick down, he does eventually break out. Then he wins the first fall with a backslide, deep into the time limit.

Inoki and Robinson take the time they’re given and use it to great effect, using the “slowed” pace to show how each man thinks as a wrestler and competitor. Robinson began wrestling in 1955. In 1970 he vacated the titles he held in England and began traveling the world. This match is a huge milestone of Robinson’s post-UK careers, as he had earned a reputation in England, North America, and Japan as being one of the world’s greatest technical wrestlers, right there with Antonio Inoki.

Here, you see everything that made Inoki a star. He’s an incredible babyface — handsome, skilled; he’s both NJPW’s flagbearer and foundation, but he’s also something else: New Japan Pro Wrestling’s philosophy embodied in one man. When someone wrestled Antonio Inoki in the 1975s, everything about them, positive and negative, was blown up for the audience to see. Robinson doesn’t have any flaws, really, so who he’s revealed to be here is a nomad whose first instinct is to win. How sweet his backslide pin of Inoki must have been.

What’s great, to me, is that Inoki doesn’t panic in the second fall. He is determined to wrestle his match, not Robinson’s and not the clock’s. He does wrestle somewhat riskier than he did during the first fall, but he doesn’t stray too far from what he’s established. He is comfortable. He is calm. He is Antonio Inoki, and few men in the history of wrestling have exuded as much confidence as he did throughout the course of his life. He wins a relatively short second fall with the Octopus Hold, which is very pretty here, and then he and Robinson trade forearms into the time limit.

Is it dissatisfying that this match goes on so long without a definitive winner? Absolutely not. It’s not a great finish, but if you think about it, how many wrestling matches do? If you’ll allow me to invoke him for a moment, Triple H once said something to the effect that wrestling is a story that never finishes writing itself. A less romantic way of putting it is that a great, definitive finish diminishes a match’s ability to draw. In this match you see Robinson win and you see Inoki win. The question the draw asks the viewer is “wouldn’t you like to see one of these guys really win?”

And the answer is yes. A time limit draw is a compromise, and wrestling fans aren’t exactly conditioned to accept compromises. We want our heroes to win, our villains to lose, and for the moments that live from bell to bell to excite, regardless of who gets booed or cheered. Any dickhead can wrestle for an hour, but it takes talent to wrestle for an hour. Billy Robinson and Antonio Inoki aren’t just talented; they are two wrestlers who whole of their sport draws ideas and inspiration from, and they are at their best here