Ali vs. Inoki Read Online Free Page B

chasing fights with great boxers. There are far fewer examples of greatboxers chasing great wrestlers, but that’s what Ali seemed to have in mind. Ali’s interest in Inoki’s offer hinged, of course, on a massive payday. But his love of professional wrestling, and the notion that the boxer-versus-wrestler debate had not been settled, were quite compelling to Ali. That was particularly true, he explained, because a boxer of his caliber, in his prime, taking on a top-form “rassler” was rare. The possibility of what might happen wasn’t much of a mystery, though. Documented mixed-style fights date as far back as the days of antiquity, when Athens and Rome cradled civilizations, and the results suggested grapplers held a significant edge when allowed to ply their trade.
    The influential sport of
pankration
, a Greek term that translates to “all powers,” is the ancient version of mixed fighting. Mythologized as the martial art Theseus used to slay the Minotaur in the labyrinth and Hercules employed to subdue the Nemean lion, pankration in the real world during the seventh century B.C. blended a mix of unbridled striking and grappling that left all attacks on the table. The wide-ranging barbarism of pankration, save eye gouging and biting, was only too restrictive for Spartan fighters, who, true to their reputation, boycotted competitions unless no holds were barred. The Greeks, however, were on board—it was said Zeus grappled with his father, the titan Kronos, for control over Mount Olympus. Mere mortals became godlike if they found success among the three wrestling forms that rounded out the combat sports lineup at the ancient Olympiad. A quite vicious form of boxing, known for disfiguring faces with fists wrapped in hard leather straps, was also featured as sport.
    Until 393 A.D ., when Theodosius I, the last man to rule the entirety of the Roman Empire, abolished gladiatorialcombat and pagan festivals including the Olympics, pankration created many star athletes celebrated by the Greeks. Mixed fighting held a prominent place in that part of the world for more than a thousand years, yet at the return of the Olympic games to Greece in 1896, bareknuckle brawlers capable of punching and grappling weren’t welcome. Not that it mattered much. These types of fights persisted as humans across a multitude of generations, regardless of the social mores of the day, were compelled to participate in or watch sanctioned violence.
    At the turn of the twentieth century, Martin “Farmer” Burns, whose headstone at the St. James Cemetery in Toronto, Iowa, reads “World’s Champion Wrestler,” was the man to challenge. Shy of 175 pounds yet incredibly strong, Burns was the obligatory bear on the mat during his heyday, boasting a twenty-inch neck that allowed him to perform carnival circuit stunts like dropping six feet off a platform wearing a noose, as if he’d been convicted of a capital crime, while whistling “Yankee Doodle.” Burns’ power and skill made him an effective enough grappler into his fifties, handling almost anyone with the “catch-as-catch-can” wrestling style—an influential 1870s British creation that made full use of pinning positions and, absorbing what worked from other parts of the world, a menagerie of painful submissions holds.
    By 1910, Burns’ prestige put him in position to work alongside “Gentleman Jim” Corbett—who famously took the heavyweight boxing title from John L. Sullivan eighteen years earlier. The pair served as conditioning coaches for Jim Jeffries, the “Great White Hope” to the generally reviled blackness that was then boxing heavyweight champion JackJohnson. Say this about Jeffries, the 220-pound banger knew how to assemble a training camp. Burns and Corbett, who in his final fight in 1903 failed to regain the title against Jeffries, are regarded as major influences on the increasingly scientific way people trained their bodies.
    During Jeffries’ camp in Reno,