>>8726950I made a thread about this in April last year
Behind Antonio Inoki's "Diplomacy of the Fighting Spirit in the Soviet Union"
>Antonio Inoki, who has challenged peace activities through professional wrestling, brought Soviet judoka and amateur wrestlers into the ring at Tokyo Dome to realize a three-country match between Japan, the U.S., and the Soviet Union.>In 1988, Inoki came up with a plan to create professional wrestlers in the Soviet Union to fight in Japan and the U.S as well as in their home country. He also had a plan to create a Soviet heavyweight boxer to fight against an American world heavyweight champion, as in the story of the movie "Rocky.>Masa Saito, Hiroshi Hase, and others participated as coaches in training sessions in The Georgian SSR (now Georgia), and the local athletes gradually began to understand how to run the ropes.>At that time, when the Soviet Union "exported" its athletes abroad, it set up an agency called SOV Intersport and demanded high guarantees from its opponents. Inoki and New Japan Pro-Wrestling demanded the same high fees, and even added a percentage of gate receipts. According to his own account, Inoki wanted to push open the Soviet Iron Curtain a bit through sports exchange, but there were no words like "exchange" or "friendship" in the conversation; everything was about money.>After that, Inoki patiently negotiated with them, but the talks continued with no progress, and finally he told the SOV Intersport representative that the negotiations had broken down.>The SOV Intersport representative said, "We are private citizens, so the cancellation of the Tokyo Dome show will result in a loss of about 300 million yen, but that's all we have to pay. But you are representatives of your nation. If we don't do this, your faces will be smeared, and I don't think you will get away with it for free." 
