10 Wrestlers Who Became Involved In Politics

2. Antonio Inoki

Rhyno Rhino Wwe
WWE.com

Make no mistake about it, Antonio Inoki is a professional wrestling legend. Inoki founded New Japan Pro Wrestling, was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2010, converted to Islam and also headlined the biggest professional wrestling event in history, as he defeated Ric Flair in front of 190,000 obedient North Koreans in 1995.

Inoki is also an extremely successful politician, with his political career beginning whilst he was still an active in-ring competitor. His father Sajiro was also a politician, and in 1989 Antonio (born Kanji Inoki) was elected to the Japanese House of Councillors, representing his own Sports and Peace Party. Inoki got stuff done, to say the least, including a one-man mission to Iraq in 1990 to negotiate the release of Japanese hostages with Saddam Hussein.

Inoki has been active in trying to improve relations between nations in the Far East, taking more trips to North Korea than anyone involved in wrestling, including drunk-!*$% Dennis Rodman. To this day, Antonio Inoki is an MP in the Japanese Upper House.

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Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.