There are some things a person should never have to see happen to a man like Ali. This is the story of one of them

Warning: this piece is 4,000 words long. If you don't think you can get away with pretending to work while you read for that long, you might want to print it out and read it on the train home later

Picture Muhammad Ali.

How do you see him?

Standing snarling over Sonny Liston? Shadow boxing on the bottom of a swimming pool? Leaning into the ropes as George Foreman pummels his kidneys? Stooping, shaking, to light the Olympic flame?

How about Ali flapping about on the canvas while an 18 stone wrestler sits on his face? Who wants to remember Ali that way?

There are some things a person should never have to see happen to a man like Ali. This is the story of one of them.

'Six million dollars, that's why'

25 May 1976. It is eight months on from his third and final fight against Joe Frazier, the Thrilla in Manila and Ali has been busy boxing stooges. At the age of 33, he has suggested that it would be his final year before retirement. In January he beat a Belgian named Jean-Pierre Coopman with a knockout in the fifth. In April, he turned up overweight for a bout with Jimmy Young, and was taken a full 15 rounds by a 15-1 outsider. Chastened, in May Ali travelled to Munich, where he knocked out Yorkshireman Richard Dunn in five rounds.

Frank Keating was there for the Guardian.

"Dunne done with, Ali spent last night getting himself and us psyched up for his next superdooper smackeroo – in a few days he ups his marquee from here to Tokyo where he takes on the gigantic Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki. Inoki will be able to run the full range of all-in wrestling moves and use ploys including karate chops, at which he is, according to Ali at his wide-eyed best, 'the most fearsome man in who-le, wi-de, wo-rld.' Anything goes apparently."

Not quite anything. A special set of rules had been agreed for this prototype mixed martial arts fight. Ali would wear four-ounce gloves, and would be able to tag out of any grapple by touching the ropes. Inoki would be bare-handed. There was to be no kneeing, kicking, or hitting below the belt. Anyone thrown out of the ring would have 20 seconds to get back in.

It was a hell of a sales pitch for a fight. The two would be contesting the title of toughest man on the planet. Of course the whole thing stank of the circus, and there were plenty of people who said so. Was The Greatest selling out? No doubt. After his fight against Young, Ali held a press conference in his hotel bedroom, and held forth from underneath the covers.

"Why fight a wrestler and demean the boxing title in many people's eyes, Ali was asked. If his stated plan to retire at the end of the year was true, his answer was understandable. 'Six million dollars, that's why,' the champion replied."

'What's karate from a distance man? Nothing!'

The story of exactly how Ali came to be in that ring, underneath Antonio Inoki's spandex-clad ass, is tough to untangle. It's only 30 years on and the facts are already a mess, recounted by a disparate set of narrators, each as unreliable as the other.

The idea of fighting Inoki supposedly came about in April 1975, when Ali was introduced to Ichiro Yada, president of the Japanese Amateur Wrestling Association, at a reception in the US. Supposedly, Ali bragged to Yada: "Isn't there any Oriental fighter who will challenge me? I'll give him one million dollars if he wins." The stage-managed remark was worked into headline news in Japan. Inoki accepted the challenge and, eventually, Ali accepted a $6m final offer from Inoki's backers. In March '76 the fight was made. The venue was the Budokan in Tokyo, and the date 26 June.

Bob Arum had signed on as promoter, he remembered the deal happening like this:

"Now Herbert [Muhammad - Ali's manager] came to me and he said these Japanese people have come to him with all kinds of money to go over and fight this wrestler, Inoki, in Japan. Professional wrestlers are performers, I thought, the thing is a fraud."

Ferdie Pacheco, Ali's doctor, has a different story:

"Ali's fight in Tokyo was basically a Bob Arum thought-up scam that was going to be 'ha-ha, ho-ho. We're going to go over there. It's going to be orchestrated. It's going to be a lot of fun and it's just a joke.' Well, when we got over there, we found out no one was laughing."

Either way, Ali was none too flustered about the prospect, as he told the Guardian's Keating: "The guy comes for me. I just jab him, bop, bop, bop. He can't get close enough. What's karate from a distance man? Nothing. When I've jabbed him enough, I'll knock him out."

'If this fight were a real go, I think that it would scare Ali away'

Even today, Inoki is hard to avoid in Japan. A brilliant self-publicist, he is as famous in his country as Ali is in the US. Nowadays he has his own brand of vitamin water and, among other things, his own line of condoms. As the advert says:

"Condoms that have inherited "Inoki-ism!" Fighting condoms decorated with the Inoki DAAAAAAH! pose! USE WITHOUT QUESTION! USE AND YOU WILL FIND OUT! INOKIX 1000 - 12-pack ¥1,050".

In 1976 though, Inoki was 33, and renowned only for his skill as a professional wrestler. In the 1950s, when television sets were becoming more common across Japan, pro-wrestling was one of the biggest ratings boosters. Inoki had been the protege of the great Rikidozan, the 'Father of puroresu'. (Rikidozan, whose schtick was all about restoring national pride in the aftermath of the war, would later die of peritonitis after being stabbed with a urine-soaked knife by a gangster in a Tokyo nightclub – but that's another story).

Many of Rikidozan's most popular fights were against American wrestlers. They had a formula: the Americans would usually fight dirty (using chairs, that sort of thing) and typically Rikidozan would come out on top after unleashing a traditional Japanese fighting move, getting one over on the sneaky Americans through his 'fighting spirit'.

Inoki inherited a similar spiel. He was a teenager working on a coffee plantation in Brazil when Rikidozan discovered him. Or so the story went. "In those days it was like living as a slave," Inoki told the world in the pre-fight press conference. "Now it is good to think I worked on the plantation in 45 degree heat. I struggled to eat, but such a life gave me the spirit to fight."

Through the 60s Inoki rose to the top of the puroresu scene, and got to be so big that in 1971 he was kicked out of the Japanese Wrestling Association for attempting a takeover. He went looking for bigger paydays and greater fame, and hit upon the idea of mixed martial arts fighting.

Before he met Ali, he had already fought a bout against the heavyweight judo gold medallist from the Munich Olympics, Wilhelm Ruska. Inoki destroyed Ruska, battering him into a TKO with "a succession of three consecutive back suplexes". Given that Inoki was a pro-wrestler, suspicions that the fight was fixed were rampant. Ruska never suggested the fight was anything other than legit, but then neither did any other of the 20 or so fighters who Inoki fought in MMA bouts with over the next 13 years, Ali included.

The experts were not convinced.

Donn F Draeger was one of them. Draeger was an ex-US marine, author of the Comprehensive Guide to Asian Martial Arts and Sean Connery's fight-double on You Only Live Twice. He is someone that a certain kind of man, not necessarily the kind you'd want to have a beer with, would describe as a 'legend'. He wrote about Inoki's fights in a series of letters back from Japan to a friend in the US.

"Inoki's recent 'defeat' of Ruska was a farce. Ruska could murtilize him if he was allowed to do so; the whole thing with Ali is a promotion gimmick. If this fight were a real go, I think that it would scare Ali away, and that if Inoki insists on it being real, the thing will never take place."

'When your fist connects with my chin, take care that your fist is not damaged'

As Ali arrived in Tokyo, the hype grew louder. Diplomatic relations between the two nations were tense, still suffering the from 1971's Nixon shock, when Tricky Dicky took the US dollar off the gold standard, causing massive appreciation of the yen and ruining the Japanese export market. The US had only relinquished administrative control of Okinawa to Japan in 1972. It was just the right environment for a bit of nationalistic jingoism.

As he landed at the airport, Ali announced his arrival with typical subtlety. His cheerleaders cut a path through the thicket of photographers and fans surrounding them, bellowing as they went: "There will be no Pearl Harbour! Muhammad Ali has returned! There will be no Pearl Harbour!"

The Budokan was sold out, with the best seats going for £1,500. Anticipation was not confined to Tokyo. In New York Vince McMahon Sr was selling tickets to a closed-circuit telecast of the fight at Shea Stadium, and had flogged 32,897 seats at $10 apiece. At Shea the Ali v Inoki fight would be the main event on a double-bill with a live bout between Check Wepner, who had gone 15 rounds with Ali the previous year, and Andre the Giant. The footage from Shea was being relayed around the world, you could even watch it live at the Birmingham Odeon, £5 for the cheap seats, or £7.50 if you had someone to impress.

When the two men came face to face for the first time, Ali announced he would nickname Inoki 'The Pelican' because of his big bullseye chin. Inoki looked quietly back at him and replied, through a translator: "When your fist connects with my chin, take care that your fist is not damaged." He then presented The Greatest with a crutch, to use after he had been thrown from the ring. Inoki said afterwards:

"I don't know how seriously Muhammad Ali is taking the fight, but if he doesn't take it seriously, he could suffer damage. I'm going in there fighting. I may even break his arm."

What happened next? Well, that's the bit nobody can agree on.

'OK, so when do we do the rehearsal?'

Whether Ali was aware of it himself or not is still the subject of debate, but there are plenty of people who insist that his handlers knew the fight was a fix from the moment they signed the deal and that, in return for his $6m, their champ was supposed to lose.

The original plan, according to the boxing journalist Jim Murphy, was for the fight to finish with Ali throwing a punch that would accidentally hit the referee and knock him out. Ali would stoop over the ref in concern, and while he was distracted Inoki would knock him down with a kick to the head. The referee would then come around and count Ali out. That way, Inoki would claim the win, but Ali would save face because of his noble instincts.

Except that when Ali found out he had to lose, however it was supposed to happen, he refused to countenance the idea. The organisers were left with a fixed fight that no one was prepared to throw.

But according to Inoki's version of the story, Ali and his entourage had signed on expecting the fight to be an exhibition rather than a real contest. It was only when they went to see Inoki train, and watched him break and twist a series of sparring partners with a series of brutal drop-kicks and violent grapples, that the truth dawned.

"OK, so when do we do the rehearsal?" Ali supposedly asked Inoki, only to get the answer: "No, no. This isn't an exhibition. It's a real fight!"

Whichever version is correct, in the days leading up to the fight the camps of Ali and Inoki began to renegotiate the rules. All of a sudden, a list of restrictions was imposed on Inoki. He would not be allowed to throw Ali, or tackle him, and could not land any kicks unless he had one knee in contact with the mat.

In another of his letters home, Donn Draeger had his own explanation for this late twist.

"The rules have been so seriously modified that the contest is no longer boxing versus wrestling. Unless this were done there would be no way to choreograph the match and make it look convincing. Ali can grapple or punch the man down; Inoki is not allowed to leg-dive or tackle. That latter restriction is the same as prohibiting Ali from jabbing. What a farce!"

Or, as the Japanese Wikipedia has it: "As a result of realising the bout was genuine, the Ali camp demanded a new set of rules which basically stopped Inoki from doing much ... the Ali camp also demanded that no detailed version of the rules be made public before the fight."

The Americans, Inoki's fans suggested, had bent the rules to their advantage at the last minute, just as they had when the Black Ships arrived at Yokohama in the 1850s and demanded the Shogun open Japan to foreign trade, just as they had when Nixon renewed trade relations with China and again when he took the dollar off the gold standard, just, in short, as Americans always did.

The rules, now so convoluted as to be almost incomprehensible, were not revealed to the public before the fight, either at Shea or at the Budokan. They would have made the whole farrago seem like even more of a multi-million dollar mockery than it already was.

'It's haemorrhaging!'

26 June 1976. The night of the fight. No one knew what to expect when the bell went, least of all Ali. What followed was 15 rounds of pure slapstick.

CLANG.

Before the ringing had stopped, Inoki had sprinted the 16-feet gap between the two men, and thrown himself feet first at Ali in a deranged two-footed tackle. Ali sidestepped, Inoki missed. Before the two could square up, Inoki threw another lunging kick, missed again, and landed flat on his back.

And then things started to get really silly.

Inoki didn't get up. He lay on his back at Ali's feet and refused to stand.

As Ali circled him warily Inoki scooted around on his behind, like a hound trying to scratch its ass on the carpet. Occasionally he would kick viciously upwards at Ali's knees. He stayed like this for all but the first 14 seconds of the three-minute round.

Inoki had come up with a cunning plan in response to the late rule changes. How could Ali hit him if he was already on the floor? Ali shuffled around looking perplexed. He tried taking a few sneaky toe-punts at Inoki's behind, but whenever he got close Inoki would flail out his feet. He hopped back and forth like a man trying to stamp out a fire with his bare feet.

The only people more bemused than Ali were the tens of thousands watching the fight live and on TV. Ali started walking around the ring, out of reach of Inoki's kicks, taunting his opponent by shouting "Coward Inoki! Inoki no fight!" Unflustered by this, Inoki continued to lie flat on the canvas.

It got bad. In the fourth round Inoki, still flat on his back, trapped Ali in a corner and started peddling kicks wildly at his thighs. Ali leapt up on to the ropes and tucked his legs underneath him, shouting in frustration and disbelief.

It got worse. In the sixth, Ali tried to grab Inoki's ankle as he kicked him, but Inoki wrapped his other leg around Ali's calf and flipped him over on to the canvas. He then rolled over on top of Ali's chest and squatted on his face. It's not a great moment in Ali's career. The indignity of it even spurred him, in the next round, to throw his first punch.

Bill Gallo remembered watching on the big screen at the Shea.

"What could Ali do when his opponent spent his time safely flat on the floor and kicking the hell out of him? All Ali could do was look down at his foe, talking to him and waving his arms, urging the guy to get up and 'fight like a man'. No dice, the canvas was a lot safer to the Japanese canvasback."

In the eighth, Angelo Dundee, Ali's trainer, demanded that Inoki tape the tips of his shoelaces because one of the eyelets came loose and was cutting Ali's legs. A wound had already opened up on his thigh. "It's haemorrhaging!" screamed the announcer, desperately trying to maintain the pretence that this was a genuine contest by injecting some drama into the farcical scenes he was describing. "Ali's corner looks worried!"

In the 10th Ali threw his second punch. Like Gallo, Jim Taylor was by this point feeling pretty sure that he, along with everyone else who had paid for the privilege of watching, had been sold a dud.

"In the 13th, Ali picked up the pace and threw two punches, making six in all unless you count the two times he reached out and grabbed Inoki's foot. Inoki actually tripped him to the canvas twice. Once he kneed him, whereupon Ali climbed through the ropes and threatened to go home."

The fight went a full 15 rounds. Ali threw six punches.

Inoki's fans thought he had out-witted the cheating Americans. Ali's thought that Inoki was being cowardly. Everyone thought it was a waste of time.

The crowd at the Budokan started throwing rubbish into the ring and chanting "Money back! Money back!" According to Donn Draeger, "the Budokan janitorial people took almost a full day to clean up the garbage that was hurled at the two 'combatants' as the result of their lousy performance."

The fight, such as it was, was scored as a draw. Inoki had been three points up but, conveniently, he was docked all three for fouls. In theory the tie meant no one had lost face, especially as Inoki could claim he would have won had it not been for the penalties, whereas Ali could defend himself by saying his opponent had cheated. In reality, the entire thing was utterly humiliating for everyone involved. The two fighters, of course, could take consolation in the fact they were now several million dollars richer.

'It was terrible, it was embarrassing'

"How could I knock him down when he was down already?" complained Ali afterwards. "I just couldn't hit him while he was on the floor." Inoki rebuffed Ali by pointing out he had been unfairly "handicapped by the rules that said no tackling, no karate chops, no punching when on the mat".

The fight stank, and made a huge financial loss, but Ali's camp had more serious concerns, as Bob Arum remembers:

"So fine, OK. It was terrible, it was embarrassing. But Ali is bleeding from the legs. He gets an infection in his legs; almost has to have an amputation. Not only the [Ken] Norton fight would've been not happening, but Ali could've been a cripple for the rest of his life."

Ali was due to fight Norton in September. Inoki's repeated kicks to the leg had left him with two blood clots. Before he flew to the US, he was due to fight exhibition bouts in the Philippines and South Korea. Pacheco recalls advising Ali, as he lay in bed with ice-bags around his thighs, to skip the fights and go to hospital. As it was he went through with them, and spent two weeks in care in LA when he returned to the US.

Pacheco, who would stop working with Ali in 1977, disgruntled that his concerns were being ignored, insists that Ali's mobility as a fighter never quite recovered from the kicking he took in Tokyo and the subsequent infection of his legs. Certainly he suffered in his fight against Norton, eking out a narrow win on points, and he would never knock anyone out again.

'In the ring, we were tough opponents. After that, we built love and friendship with mutual respect'

As for Inoki, the fight made him one of the most famous men in Japan. The 'Ari kikku' is a fundamental part of any schoolboy's repertoire of playground fighting moves, along with windmilling your arms and giving Chinese burns. There are kids in Japan who know how to do the Ari kikku without even knowing who 'Ari' is.

Ali and Inoki became good friends. Inoki started using The Greatest, Ali's theme music, as his own signature tune, and he borrowed the catchphrase "bom-ba-ye" from Ali's fans at the Rumble in the Jungle. He repeatedly exploited it for commercial purposes, using it as the title for a song, a film and a series of showcase wrestling events. In 1986 he whipped up another great brouhaha when he fought, and beat, Leon Spinks, the man who had taken the title off Ali in 1978.

In 1989, Inoki established his own political group – the Sports and Peace Party – and was elected to the lower house of Japanese government, continuing his wrestling career while in office. In 1990, astonishingly, he was sent as a special envoy to negotiate with Saddam Hussein over the release of Japanese citizens being held hostage in Iraq. He was, after all, the man who had conquered The Greatest in front of the eyes of the whole world. He eventually left office in 1995 amid accusations he had been bribed by the Yakuza.

He fought his last fight in 1998, 38 years after he had made his puroresu debut. Ali flew out from America to watch. After Inoki had completed his final victory, Ali climbed into the ring and the two men hugged. Ali's representative read a message over the PA:

"It was 1976 when I fought Antonio Inoki at the Budokan. In the ring, we were tough opponents. After that, we built love and friendship with mutual respect. So, I feel a little less lonely now that Antonio has retired. It is my honour to be standing on the ring with my good friend after 22 years. Our future is bright and has a clear vision. Antonio Inoki and I put our best efforts into making world peace through sports, to prove there is only one mankind beyond the sexual, ethnical or cultural differences. It is my pleasure to come here today."

You would never have known the fight was a gyp, but then maybe Ali and Inoki would rather keep it that way.

You can watch footage of the fight for yourself here and here. Enjoy.

There are several journalists whose work I've used in researching and writing this piece, not least Jim Murphy, Aaron Tallent, Bill Gallo and Jim Taylor – thanks to them all.