10 Parallels Between Vince McMahon And Antonio Inoki

3. Letting Top Talent Leave

Both Vince and Inoki are guilty of not doing enough to keep many of their top tier talents from jumping to other promotions or staying loyal to them, mainly down to their stubbornness. Vince has allowed so many of his talents to leave WWE for better money or because they didn€™t like what he was doing with the promotion. Top guys like Diesel, Razor Ramon, Bret Hart, Brock Lesnar, Goldberg, and many others were allowed to leave WWE despite Vince€™s best efforts to keep them in. Inoki, meanwhile, was so arrogant in his vision of €˜Inokism€™ and the emphasis on shootfighting that some of his biggest basically stopped caring about NJPW€™s future. Top star Masahiro Chono became majorly detached from the promotion in the late 1990s and early 2000s, opting to become a freelancer rather than remain tethered to Inoki's ailing company. Riki Choshu left NJPW after too many disagreements with Inoki while Shinya Hashimoto, another top draw, formed his own promotion in response to Inoki€™s stubbornness. Keiji Mutoh (The Great Muta) became so disenfranchised with Inoki that he jumped to AJPW after spending over a decade working with the chinster. In all of these cases, the supposedly genius promoters couldn€™t keep their top talent from leaving, and suffered as a result. NJPW was gutted of its top talent in the early 2000s and wouldn€™t bounce back until many years later, while WWE suffered significantly after Vince failed to stop his main guys from defecting.