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Rick Flair v. Antonio Inoki: Live from the May Day Stadium

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According to Wikipedia (so it must be true):

In 1995 the Japanese and Korean governments came together to hold a two-day wrestling festival for peace in Pyongyang, North Korea. The event drew 150,000 and 190,000 fans respectively to May Day Stadium. The show featured The Steiner Brothers, Road Warrior Hawk, Hiroshi Hase, Chris Benoit, and others. The main event saw the first and only match between Inoki and Ric Flair with Inoki coming out on top. Days before this event, Antonio Inoki and the Korean press went to the grave and birthplace of Rikidozan and paid tribute to him.

UPDATE: Here is the full match.

UPDATE: Ric Flair discusses the match!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 7:30 am and is filed under Civil society, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

  • oddly enough word on the street is that Muhammed Ali was one of the Judges, seriously. And to add more contact I sat behind Inoki on a flight from Pyongyang to Beijing in April, the fella crushed my knees mercilessly for 90 minutes, I couldn’t complain though as he was wearing a very dapper bright pink scarf

  • Oh and a quick follow-up–one of the comments on the YouTube page linked above points out (mockingly) that Inoki is Japanese and so the Koreans are supporting one of their enemies against another [Japan v. USA]. In fact Inoki is very famous in North Korea as he was the protege of Rikki Dosan, a Korean-Japanese wrestler and author of the very odd memoir ‘I am a Korean.’ DPRK citizens know Inoki is Japanese, but he’s considered to be one of the ‘good ones.’ Mansudae Art Studio in Pyongyang sells a larger than life (very big then) bust of Inoki in the outlet at their factory.

An affiliate of 38 North
38 North is a project of The US-Korea Institute
at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).