Joseph and Colette Discuss Billy Robinson vs. Antonio Inoki

And Nick Bockwinkel. You can't discuss Antonio Inoki and Billy Robinson without discussing Nick Bockwinkel. Or Jumbo Tsuruta, for that matter!

NJPW

BIG EGG is one month old now! Thank you for your support. Unfortunately, the Billy Robinson/Antonio Inoki match discussed here is only up on NJPW World, but if you look at the above picture for seven minutes, you’ll get the idea. Here are this week’s essays!

Joseph: Billy Robinson Escaping an Antonio Inoki Headscissors and Going 60
Colette: Antonio Inoki and Billy Robinson Can Do It All Night

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Colette Arrand
Antonio Inoki died while the two of us were plotting out how BIG EGG would work, so it seemed natural to choose one of his matches to launch the project with. Inoki's career is vast and very well documented -- the video quality of New Japan's archival footage rivals a lot of modern wrestling footage -- so choosing a match wasn't easy. Narrowing it down to "the 1970s" and "broadway" involved, if I remember correctly, looking for something you were less familiar with, and while I am hardly an Inoki expert, I'm a really big fan and had seen a lot of them, this Billy Robinson one being a favorite, perhaps sentimentally, because it was my introduction to Robinson. I know we'll talk about him, but I want to start with Inoki -- did watching him for a solid hour grant you any new insight on him?

Joseph Anthony Montecillo
I don't know that new insight is the right way to put it. It's more of I was able to see him do more of what I'd already observed him to be really great at. A lot of piece this week was about the sort of problem/solution nature of a lot of the spots in the broadway, and it's something I first really noticed in Inoki via his famous 1976 bout against Andre the Giant. We both wrote about the headscissors were Inoki himself is the problem, but across both those matches I mentioned, a lot of the appeal really is seeing how Inoki overcomes the challenges in front of him. He always does so in really compelling, and very classically-minded ways.

Colette Arrand
Yeah. Even with the headscissors spot, Inoki is solving a problem. It comes after a long segment where Robinson turns a slap to the hotheaded Inoki, which leads to him throwing two of the biggest bombs in the match: the belly to belly over the top rope, which still looks crazy, to my eye, and the backbreaker. Narratively speaking there's no way Antonio Inoki could have seen the headscissors working as effectively as it did, but it was his means of taking back a match that had gotten away from him. It's so smart, too. A basic move that someone as technically gifted as Robinson should be able to escape, but getting it on was so important that Inoki basically wills it into existence, and his eventual escape is a simple bridge. Billy Robinson's autobiography is called Physical Chess, and watching he and Antonio Inoki felt like watching that cliché get born. They're so smart, and it works really well for me here.