>>4978710I thought it was just Western internet Reddit fags who hate on Inoki. Inoki is generally respected by older people who were actually around to see Inoki-ism. A lot of times, the haters neglect or don't even understand the context of that era. Inoki-ism happened during the height of Pride Fighting Championships. PFC was mainstream in Japan, and their PFC events was watched by practically everyone similar to how everyone watches the Superbowl in the USA. On paper, Inoki had a good idea, take what's currently popular and merge it with his league since Inoki along with Bruce Lee, Muhaamad Ali & a few others, were the grandfathers of MMA.
The problem is that he didn't protect his own talent. For some reason he let them shoot and expected his guys to win.
It's strange because PFC's big fights were usually fixed so they felt more like wrestling than NJPW did. PFC would fix fights so that the guys with starpower would go over the challengers or they match them against a bunch of tomato cans. Inoki didn't do that, for some reason he expected his guys to win against established MMA fighters. Inoki did have a good eye for MMA though, if I recall he was the one who discovered Lyoto Machida. However the only one of Inoki's guys who was actually popular in Japan is Bob Sapp lol.
The biggest casualties of Inokism were guys like Tenzan who is still fucking wrestling at NJPW to this day. He was rising in popularity during the 90s but then MMA took over & he got left behind.
As for Pride, although they did fix fights I vastly prefer their ruleset over UFC. UFC's rules favor BJJ. Pride fighting favored strikers & wrestlers due to how BJJ dudes just got their faces stomped on or soccer kicked. I'm only in my 30s but I remember that era quite well because combat sports were so damn exciting during the early 2000s, late 90s era up until WCW got bought out, PFC was discovered to be a Yakuza front, Inoki lost favor within NJPW, etc.
