Over the decades that I’ve watched fights with my dad, then by myself and with my own kids, I’ve seen some very strange things happen in the ring. I mean, I’ve seen a parachutist land on the ring apron in the middle of a heavyweight championship fight; a champion burst into tears and refuse to throw a punch to defend himself in a title defense; a grown man so frustrated over catching his opponent’s elbows and headbutts that he bit off a chunk of the other man’s ear. I’ve seen fights go past their safety points and end with a fighter never regaining consciousness. Worse, I’ve seen aging champs take fights past their primes where every blow they suffered took away a part of their humanity. But I think the strangest thing I’ve ever witnessed in a ring was the night Muhammad Ali decided to actually compete against Antonio Inoki in a mixed-styles bout cursed by the rules the fighters chose to “protect” themselves.
Growing up as a wrestling fan, too, I used to argue with my dad constantly about what a wrestler could do to a boxer if he could get his hands on his opponent. Every time we engaged in that fantasy, the old man would only laugh and repeat “IF” every time I used the word to make my case. We both knew wrestling was scripted, but we were also savvy enough to know that professional wrestlers were “real” athletes, many of whom were pros from other sports like football or martial arts. That was definitely the case with Inoki, a skilled, multi-creed martial artist and true physical specimen.
When we first heard that the fight between Ali and Inoki was on, my dad and I assumed it was going to be an exhibition, a scripted spectacle designed for entertainment that would leave each fighter with his dignity intact. There was no way the old man was going to drop money on the closed circuit to watch that kind of farce. But when news came out that the fighters, particularly Ali, intended to fight, to actually compete, dad was locked in. I’m not sure what he was expecting. I don’t even know what I hoped would happen. What happened, though, was something else.
From the jump, Inoki fought the fight from the ground where Ali couldn’t punch him. And while it made Inoki look like a crab crawling around the ring on his back every round, it definitely neutralized Ali’s lethality. All that Ali could do round after round was dance around the ring jumping up in the air and climbing onto the ropes to avoid Inoki’s booming kicks to his thighs. Every once in a while, Ali would try to catch Inoki’s foot to entice him into the air, but that just ended with Ali being pretzeled and dragged to the ground where he did not want to be.
By the tenth round we could see swelling and a giant bruise forming on Ali’s left leg, to the point where he could barely move to avoid the kicks. No matter how much he screamed “coward Inoki,” there was nothing Ali could do to foil his opponent’s strategy.
I have to admit, though, Inoki’s tactic wasn’t the strangest part of the fight for me. It made sense to avoid the boxer’s hands as much as possible while causing damage with kicks. No faulting Inoki for any of that. What was truly unbelievable to me was how slowly time passed watching this cycle of crab crawls and kicks against Ali’s jumping and screaming. Fifteen rounds were an absolute eon. Slow like a dream dance or déjà vu experience listening to a record needle skip over the same section of a song again and again, a scratch in the fabric of time.
When the final bell sounded, I remember my dad and me just staring at the TV, stunned by what we’d seen. Neither of us had any idea how the judges could possibly “score” the fight. Ali landed nothing and couldn’t have possibly won any rounds, except maybe the one round where he was able to pull Inoki to his feet and slap him around a little bit. Inoki, though, had only thrown kicks to Ali’s legs that were more like timing jabs than actual scoring shots, so neither of us was sure that the judges would award points for any of those kicks.
In the end, the fight was deemed a draw. An unsatisfying, undignified, incomprehensible draw that probably set any possibility of real mixed martial arts fighting back 25 years. It was probably the only time in all the fights I watched with my dad that he was totally speechless afterwards. Nothing to commend, nothing to explain, not a single thing to argue about. And, man, THAT was strange.
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Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. Jack’s had pieces included in Best Microfiction and Best Spiritual Literature. His latest collection is Ghost Forest (Mercer University Press, 2024). He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019.
