Big Van Vader Wants Antonio Inoki to Fight Him. Boy Does He Ever.
Big Van Vader Wants Antonio Inoki to Fight Him. Boy Does He Ever.
Rekindling and putting an end to a major feud six years after the fact, in the Tokyo Dome, is a tall task, but Inoki is Inoki and Vader is Vader, so they do.
Antonio Inoki is something else, y’all. You can cram a lot into the phrase “something else,” to the extent that writing about him, even critically, can come across like hagiography. This is what happens when you are a performer and booker par excellence, a figure from whom multiple philosophies, schools, and movements take inspiration, to say nothing of individual adherents. He ran a wrestling show in North Korea. A slap from him was considered a sign of good fortune. I threw the phrase “folk hero” out there about Volk Han in a couple of essays earlier, but the phrase is better applied to someone like Inoki, though it fails to do him justice.
So when Big Van Vader slapped the shit out of him to kick off one of Inoki’s final matches in the promotion he created, I gasped.
Then it all came flooding back. Not just Vader’s famous NJPW debut, the 1987 match that, in conjunction with a quick non-finish of the advertised main event between Inoki and Riki Choshu, caused a riot in Sumo Hall, but Inoki’s 30th anniversary match, where he and Animal Hamaguchi took on Inoki and Tiger Jeet Singh. In that match, Singh goes to start, but Vader immediately taunts Inoki, goading him into the ring by bellowing “c’mon Inoki” before slapping the shit out of him. This is it, the last match of their run against each other, and the crowd is molten.
Suffice to say that things go differently in 1990 than they did in 1987. Inoki has beaten Vader one on one by this point, both on a 1/4 show by DQ, and in the 1988 NJPW League. They’ve brawled endlessly in tag team and six man tag matches. But time and political responsibilities are catching up to Inoki: this is his last match until 1992, by which point Vader is mostly out of NJPW. This is an epic rivalry, but were it not for wrestling’s penchant for minor miracles, its conclusion would be Antonio Inoki beating Animal Hamaguchi with an enziguri.
Inoki is, by 1996, in the middle of a long retirement tour. Vader left NJPW in 1992 to focus on his WCW career, but joined UWF-I in 1993. He wraps there in April 1995, leaves WCW acrimoniously in September after fighting Paul Orndorff backstage, and makes his WWF debut in the 1996 Royal Rumble. If you ever required proof that God smiles when wrestlers fight backstage, consider that we got Vader/Inoki in the Tokyo Dome instead of Vader jobbing to Hogan on an early Nitro.
Maybe Vader slaps the shit out of Inoki because he slipped on the ring apron during Inoki’s entrance. Maybe he did it to get the hate flowing. It doesn’t work. The dynamic in the opening part of this match is fascinating, as Inoki is very much wrestling like a man on a retirement tour while Vader is wrestling with something to prove. Inoki clapping after the opening slap, smiling after an early exchange, this only serves to piss the soon-to-be-Mastodon off, and if a stiff punch to Inoki’s jaw didn’t prove it, a slam onto an outside table soon would, which is followed, in short order, by that German suplex.
Antonio Inoki is one of the most well-conditioned athletes in wrestling history, but he is 53-years-old when Vader hurls him overhead, folding him ass-over-teakettle in the middle of the Tokyo Dome. The crowd erupts when he leaves his feet, keeps buzzing as Inoki lays on the mat, mouth open, breathing shallow. When Vader gets him up for a punch, Inoki crumbles to the mat inelegantly, almost like Mick Foley crumbling to the mat after the Undertaker punches him during Hell in a Cell, only this is Vader and not The Best Pure Striker in WWE History, so you know Inoki had to feel the sting a little.
Far from being the climax of the match, the German is what opens the doors to something resembling a real match. Vader did not travel to the Dome for an exhibition, or he would have simply pinned Inoki as he did in Sumo Hall. Instead, he throws Inoki out to the ramp, slaps him, screams “C’MON INOKI — FIGHT!” in his face like a man who can’t believe how easy things to this point have been. they won’t be for long, as Vader gets backdropped over the ropes, then eats a top rope knee drop from a fired up Inoki.
From there, it’s on. Inoki kicks Vader over the guardrail and onto a table. He busts him open with a chairshot. Vader throws around furniture at ringside, but if you know anything about Vader by this point (and you can go back to BIG EGG’s coverage of his match against Otto Wanz for more), it’s that Vader is at his most vulnerable in this state. Now when Inoki claps, it’s to fire up the crowd. His strikes stagger Vader. An armbar feels potentially decisive. Vader gets his licks in — his applying a rear-naked choke to slow Inoki down leads to him breaking out the big guns, including one of the nastiest chokeslams you’ll ever see — but he’s awakened something in Inoki that the past year and a half of fumbling around where the big boys play hasn’t prepped him for.
He makes mistakes, taking too long to cover Inoki after a Vader Bomb, then does the same after a moonsault, wasting his killshots in a way that recalls his epic loss to Sting. His decision to go for corner splashes seems sound from the standpoint that it’s a high impact move, but it gives Inoki space, and every time Inoki has an inch in this match, he uses it to counter Vader’s momentum. Here’s it’s a body slam, which leads to a cross armbreaker, which leads to a submission.
God, what an epic. You ache for matches like this as a wrestling fan, where the conditions are perfect and the wrestlers equipped to deliver. Wrestling is about to change in a big way in 1996, and that change won’t leave NJPW unaffected. There is more to come for Antonio Inoki (his retirement match against Don Frye fucking ROCKS), but this really feels like his last gasp as a wrestler who exists within the fabric of day-to-day wrestling, like, in getting his chin checked, he found himself with more reason to fight than just to celebrate himself.
As for Vader? He should have stayed in Japan. I wouldn’t give up his 92-94 in WCW for anything, but between his NJPW run, UWF-I, and this, there’s no arguing that Big Van Vader just belonged in Japan. It’s a shame he had to go through so much shit to get back there, but his moment is coming; what’s a loss to Shawn Michaels at SummerSlam when the Triple Crown beckons?
Rating: **** & 1/2