Billy Robinson Escaping an Antonio Inoki Headscissors and Going 60
Billy Robinson Escaping an Antonio Inoki Headscissors and Going 60
Seven minutes of this hour are perfection...
Nearly a half hour into this, Antonio Inoki puts Billy Robinson in a headscissors. It’s quite an athletic feat on its own—he throws his legs up around Robinson’s head from a standing position. Robinson, for his part, doesn’t drop with the full weight of another man bearing down on his neck . He withstands the downward momentum of the move for just long enough that I’m left thinking he might be able to carry Inoki’s weight and reach the ropes, or otherwise escape the hold.
Then Robinson falls. And that’s when the fun starts.
What proceeds from there is an extended sequence entirely based around Billy Robinson trying to escape a headscissors. I’m not exaggerating when I say “extended” here either. Inoki keeps that headscissors on for the next seven minutes as Robinson attempts to work his way out.
It’s some of the most exciting wrestling in this whole hour-long bout, and I say that without a trace of irony. In the space of a brief television match, Robinson and Inoki create an incredibly engrossing scenario. All Robinson has to do is escape one of the most standard holds in pro wrestling, and watching him exhaust his options to do so brings great joy.
It’s an ebb and flow where Robinson seizes upon an idea, attempts to execute, and either fails or has Inoki rebuff him in some way. It’s a constant exploration of leverage, power, and technique as Robinson works to escape. At first, there’s a cool competitive calm from an all-time grappler knowing that if he just plugs away at a problem, he can get out eventually. But when his initial attempts fail, there’s panic and frustration too. He throws a tantrum on the mat, thrashing like a spoiled toddler, impotent and trapped. He’s forced to regain his cool, and keep thinking. There’s a way out, and it’s not via a rope break which is the realm of cowards.
He finally is able to get Inoki on his belly and bridge up out of the headscissors. At this point, for most wrestling fans, it’s a spot we’ve seen about a million times. But in this moment, as a conclusion to Robinson’s struggle, it is a momentous occasion. I couldn’t help but cheer along with the fans in Kuramae Kokugikan.
In those seven minutes, Robinson’s able to express a full emotional arc—something many wrestlers can’t even achieve with the full hour.
Much of this very long bout plays out with this idea of problem-solution in mind. For the most part, those problems take the form of offense on both men’s sides. They either struggle to maintain control down on the mat, or move to snatch momentum away when they get back on their feet. The hour plays out as moving from one set up to the next, with both men always trying to find the right strategy to set up the eventual win.
This works extremely well on the micro scale as we get so many wonderful technical sequences from two of the best at that style. Robinson, especially, is silky smooth with his chain wrestling. Inoki for his part, might just be one of the most aesthetically-perfect professional wrestlers of all time (up there with the likes of Timothy Thatcher), and brings a snap and fight to every movement in the ring.
It doesn’t play quite as well in the grander scheme of things. Each individual section of action works well on its own, but it leads to a constant reset that makes it feel like no real progress is being made by either man in the long run. There’s big breaks in the action like Robinson tossing Inoki over the top rope with a belly-to-belly suplex, or Inoki being able to string together a series of dropkicks to turn the tide in his favor. Those are great, but they’re spaced out a little too far apart to really carry that momentum forward.
A lot of that comes from the structural choice these two make. The 1950s Chicago archival footage has taught me that in the classic NWA-style, the first fall dominating the hour was the norm for these kinds of matches. They attempt that here, but they don’t commit to it enough to work.
It’s over 40 minutes in when Robinson sneaks a backslide to get the first fall on Inoki. Inoki starts the second fall hot with big offense that sends Robinson bumping everywhere, but it doesn’t get him the victory. This sends them metaphorically backsliding back into a more listless struggle on the mat where it feels like more was lost than gained quality-wise. It’s really only in the final minutes of the second fall that things perk back up again when Robinson starts playing evasively in an attempt to run out the clock. With that set up, it’s a big triumph when Inoki’s able to get the manjigatame submission in the nick of time.
What we end up with is a great match where a chunk of it doesn’t live up to the quality of the actual action in the ring. That’s the case with a lot of wrestling broadways (even a much better and similarly famous Inoki one many years later), but it’s far less egregious here than in other examples. The mat work is just so tight and well-paced, that there’s no singular part of the ride that upsets me. At the end though, I’m left feeling like it’s a match less than the sum of its parts.
It’s not in the upper tier of broadways for me, but it still stands above a lot of other wrestling from any era. Certainly not a match that I regret watching, and one I can still actively recommend.
Quite simply, Inoki and Robinson are just better wrestlers than many who attempt such a feat, such that their failures will often still fall on the side of greatness.
IS IT BETTER THAN 6/3/94? Nope, stretched a little too thin, I’m afraid. Clip out the headscissors bit as a 7 minute match, then we can talk though.
Rating: ****