10 Parallels Between Vince McMahon And Antonio Inoki

9. Listening To Yes-Men Instead Of The Actual Geniuses That Work For Them

Both of these promoters have made questionable booking decisions that no one challenged them on, mainly because they had inner circles of yes-men that never challenged them, all while having other loyal wrestlers doing the heavy lifting for them. For Vince, his inner circle is composed of yes-men who do everything that he says without ever calling him out on anything. Because so many people kiss up to him or are too afraid to criticize him, Vince can pretty much do whatever he wants in his promotion, with no one willing to get in his way and stop him. He keeps booking the same things on RAW and SmackDown, while the workhorses of WWE do all the hard graft in making his bad ideas work as best they can, and Triple H does whatever he can to keep increasingly-jaded viewers entertained with NXT. As for Inoki, when he went overboard with the MMA craze in the early 2000s, his closest circle of friends thought he was a genius, and didn€™t challenge him mainly because he had built and carried NJPW by himself for many decades. But while Inoki was still promoting shoot fights with K-1 and Pride, smart wrestling bookers like Jushin Liger, Masa Chono and Riki Choshu were the ones who actually booked the wrestling matches that people wanted to see. And it was their direction that led to acceptable ticket sales, not Inoki€™s fixation on mixed martial artists.