10 Most Shocking NJPW Upsets
7. Hulk Hogan Vs. Antonio Inoki - IWGP Championship League 1983 - Day 28
As much a fascinating historical curio as in-the-moment shock, accounts vary, between trusted historians, as to what precisely occurred here.
Some are of the opinion that Hogan, a far more dynamic and crunching worker than he was, or needed to be, in the U.S., legitimately knocked out Antonio Inoki in the finals of the inaugural IWGP Heavyweight tournament. In the April 13, 1998 Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer specifically used the word "job" to describe the finish, indicating a predetermined outcome. Either a very well-conceived and executed work or a deeply fortuitous shoot, in how it suspiciously protected each megastar, if Hogan was involved, the cynical route is the safest.
In any event, this stunned the fans in attendance, for Inoki did not lose, and he did not lose for good reason. He wasn't merely the founder of New Japan Pro Wrestling, the politicking egomaniac with the means and the need to cover himself in glory; he stood astride the sports and entertainment components of pro wrestling as the ultra-charismatic household star of wrestling and, for a time, a genuine, top-tier worker whose work is more influential than it is timeless.
Work, shoot, whatever; Inoki retained his aura, with which he eventually bled in the next generation, and Hogan went on to join the Mount Rushmore of wrestling's immortal draws.