Bob Arum’s cautionary tale for Mayweather-Nasukawa

And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.”
Sir Rudyard Kipling

The greatest boxer of his generation, Floyd Mayweather Jr. has a contest under who knows what rules vs. Japanese combat sports star Tenshin Nasukawa. 42 years ago The Greatest had a contest under Special Rules vs. Japanese pro wrestling star Antonio Inoki. Boxing promoter Bob Arum spoke recently with Kevin Iole for Yahoo Sports, and related a cautionary tale.

I had done a deal with Ali to do a fight with Norton in September, said Arum. Herbert called me and said, ‘Bob, I need you to help me. The Japanese are offering a s***load of money to fight this wrestler. I said, ‘How the hell is a boxer going to fight a wrestler?’ It didn’t work unless it was scripted in advance.

So Arum reached out to WWWF head Vince McMahon Jr., who put Ali on some rasslin’ broadcasts to drum up interest, and came up with a script.

Vince said Ali would get Inoki trapped in the corner and start throwing these punches at him, explained Arum. Inoki would cut himself on the eyebrows and with all the sweat and everything, pretty soon, his face would be covered in blood. Ali was supposed to keep throwing punches for a bit and then turn to the referee and beg him to stop the fight.”

Inoki would jump him from behind, pin him, one, two, three and get the win. The crowd would go crazy and Ali would start yelling, ‘It’s just like Pearl Harbor.’

That would have been entertaining; Ali vs. Inoki wasn’t. Inoki ultimately used what you would now call an Open Guard, of sorts, and kicked at Ali’s legs for 15 rounds.

So what went wrong?

Ali agreed to the work, but once in Japan ran into businessman Ronald C. Holmes, who had organized the contest. As detailed in Josh Gross’s mighty Ali vs. Inoki: The Forgotten Fight That Inspired Mixed Martial Arts and Launched Sports Entertainment, Holmes believed he could have had a work for $1 million, and he was paying $6 million. No one had told Holmes about McMahon’s Pearl Harbor script; he wanted a real fight for his money, with real blood. 

A publicist tried to get Ali to practice the fight ending but Holmes was having none of it.

Holmes said, ‘What do you mean practice? This is real,’ recalled Arum. And he’s going on and Ali hears all of it and he is getting spooked. He thought he was being set up, so you couldn’t talk to him after that.

And that’s how the fight ended up being unscripted. It was real, if you will, but the “Special Rules” prohibited Inoki from executing takedowns, or grappling, or standing kicks, and the result was not compelling:

I have no idea what they’re doing, but I wish them success, said Arum. They’re just going to find there are a lot of things that make it a huge challenge to do what they’re trying to do.