18

A Favor for Antonio (Japan, 1979)

“Show an alert interest, tolerance and respect for others, and they will instinctively do the same for you.”

—Napoelon Hill, “Assemble an Attractive Personality”

In the late 1970s, Japan was a hotbed for professional wrestling, and tours there drew huge crowds and were very lucrative for the boys. It was not unusual to make more money on a ten-day or two-week tour of Japan than you could make in a month or more wrestling in one of the territories in the United States.

Shohei “Giant” Baba was the head of All-Japan Pro Wrestling and Baba and his All-Japan promotion were closely allied with the NWA. Baba had a good relationship with the Funks in particular and All-Japan was gaining momentum at the time. Baba had already had his first run with the NWA World Heavyweight Championship—a local switch of the title during a Japanese tour that had been privately arranged between Baba and NWA World Champion Jack Brisco and brokered by the Funks without the knowledge of the NWA Board of Directors. Brisco just dropped the NWA World Title to Baba at the beginning of the tour, and Baba dropped it back to Brisco at the end of the tour before Jack returned to the United States. This, of course, served to put a lot of shine on Baba in the eyes of the Japanese fans, and drew more fans to All-Japan.

Meanwhile, while this was going on, Antonio Inoki, the head of New Japan Pro Wrestling, had built an alliance with Vince McMahon Sr. and the World Wrestling Federation. Inoki was losing face in Japan because Baba had been a world champion, and Inoki had not.

Vince Sr. and Inoki wanted to enlarge their relationship. They had already worked out a deal to bring WWF talent to Japan regularly, which would be great exposure for the WWF and financially advantageous for the boys. The “payback” for this deal, though, was to give Inoki and his promotion a “rub” that would help keep him on par with Baba. The first of these overtures was for Pat Patterson to go to Japan and “lose” the North American title (which Patterson was no longer defending since Vince Sr. had renamed it the Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship) to Seiji Sakaguchi—one of Inoki’s best hands.

But there was more to come.

Vince Sr. approached me at the Hamburg television taping on November 14, 1979, and told me I would drop the belt to Inoki on my next tour of Japan, that I would get it back at the end of the tour, and that it would be a quiet little thing he was doing to help Inoki and further the WWF’s business relationship with New Japan. I didn’t have any problem with Vince’s request–Antonio and I had already had several matches in Japan, and there wasn’t a whole lot more we could do if we didn’t do a title change to keep things interesting. Vince Sr. didn’t tell me anything about how I was going to lose the belt, or how I was going to get it back—he simply told me that it would all be worked out when I got over there—that Arnold Skaaland would be coming with me and handling the business end of things, and that I could trust the New Japan promoters to handle things properly.

The chosen night was November 30, 1979, the first night of the tour, in Tokusimaat the City Gymnasium. The City Gym wasn’t a very big place—about the size of a small college fieldhouse. There were a few bleachers and then a lot of chairs lined up in rows on the floor. I presume the promoters chose this building because it happened to have been the first venue booked on the tour, and they wanted to give Antonio as much time and exposure with the belt as possible.

Unlike in the United States—where the promoters would usually bring the wrestlers together to discuss the finish—over in Japan, word just got passed along to you. In this particular case, it has all been worked out between Hisashi Shinma, representing New Japan, and Arnold Skaaland, representing Vince Sr. Arnold explained to me that we were going to do a false finish where I caught Antonio in the atomic kneedrop and pinned him for what I thought was a count of three—but he would have his leg on the rope and I wouldn’t notice. I was to pop up, throw my hands in the air and let my guard down, as Antonio, who knew he had his foot on the ropes, would get up, get behind me, and deliver a vicious suplex that would catch me off guard, knock the wind out of me, and allow him to pin me for a three count. It was a very believable finish—and one that was very respectful to me, so I was enthusiastic about making it look good.

It felt a little strange to allow myself to be pinned and to give up the WWF title, but I had lost the Western States belt, and had lost the Missouri State Championship to Jack Brisco in St. Louis, so losing a belt wasn’t a completely foreign feeling. It would be good for our business over in Japan, which, in turn, would help the WWF overall, so I was happy to do it.

My match with Antonio that night was one of our better ones. Inoki spoke little English—but he was a great performer and was always very attuned to what was going on in the ring, so we never needed to talk about much. He was easy to work with and very loose and flexible, so I could do just about anything I wanted to do with him. We did a lot of back-and-forth and switching, and we definitely had the fans engaged in the match. I hit the atomic drop and pinned Inoki for what I “thought” was a three count. I jumped up and started celebrating—and did not notice the referee waving off the pin, or Antonio getting up. When he suddenly suplexed me hard to the mat and got the three count on me—it was completely conceivable that I would have had the wind knocked out of me, having dropped my guard.

The crowd, of course, was totally stunned—and I worked to sell the pin as a screwjob as best I could. In the ring, I worked to give the impression something had gone wrong, pushing the refs and the other officials in the ring, and imploring Arnold to stop what was happening. In fact, after the match that night, I actually ran around the public areas of the building trying to convince people I had been robbed of the belt. I’m not a good actor, so I needed to convince myself this had actually been a screwjob, and to do what I would have done if the title had actually been stolen from me.

Even as I left the arena to board the bus, I was still ranting and raving about how I had been robbed because there were a lot of fans gathered there. It wouldn’t have made any sense if those fans saw me laughing with the boys or acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. In their eyes, I had just been jobbed out of the world heavyweight championship, so I had to appear to be very upset until there was no one left to see me. Normally, as you are leaving the ring, you continue to sell whatever happened in the ring until you are out of sight of the fans, and then you can just turn it off and resume your normal life. But that night was different, because we had something serious to sell to people. I carried on yet again once I got to the hotel where I was staying that night. I wanted everyone who came into contact with me that night to be convinced that I appeared to be upset and distraught, and to spread that word to their family and friends in Japan. I’ve even had some fun toying with people over the years at fan conventions by continuing to play up the idea that the “screwjob” over there was real just to see how far I could run with it.

But I guess this is the time to finally put that old chestnut to rest. There was no screwjob that night in Tokusima. The switch to Inoki in Japan was very much a planned and orchestrated event to give him the same kind of “rub” that Jack Brisco had given Baba by dropping the NWA World Title to him.

After Inoki beat me that night, he ran with the title for the full length of the tour. In his first title defense, Inoki defended the WWF title against former WWF champion Pedro Morales, who was also asked to do the honors for Inoki. Like the consummate pro that Pedro was, he graciously agreed to follow suit—which was a pretty big deal as well. You can count on one hand the number of times you saw Pedro Morales get pinned in that era—and to have the same guy pin both Backlund and Morales in the same week gives you a pretty good idea of how committed Vince Sr. was to this new Japanese partnership.

The Japanese tour ended at Sumo Hall in Tokyo on December 6, 1979. The booked finish that night was for me to come off the top rope with a high spot and pin Inoki, who was going to be distracted by outside interference from Tiger Jeet Singh. That would allow Inoki to “lose with dignity” rather than taking a straight pinfall loss in the middle of the ring in his home arena. They also did an additional little swerve with “WWF President” Hisashi Shimna coming into the ring in Japan and “overruling” the referee’s decision, declaring the bout a no-contest, and declaring the title vacant. Antonio and I had done great business together over in Japan, and this was a continuing effort to try and set up a little something for later.

Both Inoki and the New Japan promoters wanted Antonio to get a main event to wrestle me for the belt at Madison Square Garden, and this was their effort to set that up. But they hadn’t yet sold Vince Sr. on the idea, and Vince Sr. never mentioned to me that anything like that was in the works. They gave me the belt back because they knew I had dates to defend the belt back in the United States, and although they were angling for a match at the Garden, they weren’t about to anger Vince Sr. and jeopardize their new partnership by keeping the belt and trying to hijack the holiday card at the Garden.

Inoki was a major star in Japan, but because very few people in the United States at the time had access to Japanese television, no one really knew of him over here. To get Inoki “over” for a main-event appearance at Madison Square Garden would have required Antonio to come over to the United States for a couple of television tapings so they could build him up on television as a challenger who could draw the interest of the fans in New York. That would have much been easier to do if Inoki had come in as a heel with Blassie or the Wizard as his manager, but Inoki didn’t want to do that, because he was a babyface and wanted to remain so. Vince Sr., though, wasn’t about to put someone that the fans didn’t know into the main event at the Garden, particularly on the holiday card. So that was the stalemate that prevented a Backlund-Inoki match from ever happening at the Garden.

Even when NWA World Heavyweight Champion Harley Race came up to wrestle me at the Garden, Vince Sr. had Harley come up to Allentown and Hamburg and do a couple of television tapings first so that the fans would know who he was, and Harley Race was much better known in the United States than Inoki was. If that was what was required to promote a unification match at the Garden with the NWA World Heavyweight Champion, you can understand that it would have been impossible to have just brought Antonio over here for a match at the Garden without first explaining that he had beaten me over in Japan. But as far as Vince Sr. was concerned, the title change in Japan had “never happened.” It was just business for the Japanese relationship, and he wasn’t going to allow it to be exploited beyond that.

The holiday Garden card that year was on December 17, 1979, and the entire card was broadcast back to Japan. Because Antonio didn’t want to come to the United States for the necessary buildup on television, and because Antonio, who was the head of New Japan, didn’t want to get beat in Madison Square Garden, there was no way to settle the title “vacancy” in a way that satisfied anyone. I would love to know what the Japanese guys were saying on their television broadcast to try and explain this situation to their fans.

During the pre-match preparations (and despite the fact that I had been defending the belt around the territory since I had returned from Tokyo ten days earlier), Vince Sr. told me that since the broadcast of the card was going back to Japan, I couldn’t go to the ring with the belt because in the eyes of the Japanese fans, the title was still vacant. So the “President” of the WWF, Hisashi Shinma, came out to the ring with the WWF World Title at the beginning of my Texas Death Match main-event rematch with Bobby Duncam. Antonio was on the card and was put into a match with the Great Hussein Arab (The Iron Sheik) in a match for Inoki’s New Japan Heavyweight championship, while I took care of Duncam in the Texas Death main event.

Putting Inoki in the ring with the Sheik was the easiest way to ensure that Inoki would be given a hero’s welcome at the Garden. Remember that at the time, Iran and the Ayatollah Khomeini were holding 212 American hostages. The Sheik was from Teheran, both legitimately and for purposes of the storyline, and was so hot at the time that a lot of promoters didn’t even want to book him for fear that he would spark riots and violence in the arenas. Anyone who opposed the Sheik would be a guaranteed fan favorite at the Garden, so that’s what Vince Sr. decided to do with Inoki.

Sheik made Antonio look really good for the Madison Square Garden crowd, but even with that and the whole hostage crisis fueling the fans’ hatred of the Sheik, Antonio got only a modest reaction from the sellout crowd at the Garden—reinforcing Vince Sr.’s initial instinct to refuse him a main event against me for the WWF title.