It might not be the Rumble in the Jungle or at King of the Ring level, but an international pro-wrestling tournament set for the end of the month is sure to stand out as a historic event: it is taking place in Pyongyang.

At least 21 fighters will battle it out in the North Korean capital in an event organised by Antonio Inoki, a former wrestling star turned Japanese politician, who hopes the tournament will help ease international tensions with Kim Jong-un’s regime.

“Sports events bring people together,” Inoki said. “That’s what I’ve been saying for a long time.” Now 71 and retired from the ring, the lantern-jawed, 1.9-metre Inoki nevertheless is still instantly recognisable among Japanese. He is perhaps best known among Americans for a strange 1976 match in Tokyo against Muhammad Ali – a fight considered a precursor to mixed martial arts – that ended in a lacklustre draw.

“This is sports entertainment. Olympic games are a competition between countries, but here spectators can freely choose which star to cheer for and unite as one,” said Inoki, a lawmaker in Japan’s upper house who was known as “Burning Fighting Spirit” in the ring. Speaking in an interview in his parliamentary office, he wore his trademark red scarf – a remnant from his wrestling days – despite the summer heat.

The wrestlers heading to Pyongyang for the 30 August event, which will incorporate the Korean and Japanese martial arts taekwondo and aikido as well as pro wrestling, and will include three Americans.

They are Bob Sapp, who has achieved a certain level of fame in Japan; Bobby Lashley, the world heavyweight champion in “Total Nonstop Action Wrestling”; and Eric Hammer. Wrestlers from Japan (including four women), Brazil, France, China and the Netherlands are also attending, according to Inoki.

The event comes six months after Dennis Rodman and the Harlem Globetrotters made international headlines, few positive, while holding a basketball tournament in Pyongyang. Rodman sat courtside with Kim and later partied with the North Korean leader, even singing happy birthday to him.

That trip was widely criticised in the US for sending the wrong message to Kim, a sworn enemy of Washington whom Rodman called a “friend for life”.

Antonio Inoki and Muhammad Ali during an exhibition fight in Tokyo, 1976. Photograph: Allsport Hulton/Archive/Getty Photograph: Allsport Hulton/Archive/Getty

The Obama administration has been practising “strategic patience” with Pyongyang, trying to wait out Kim and his cronies rather than becoming sucked into another round of negotiations in which North Korea promises to move toward denuclearisation, extracts rewards from the outside world, then returns to its atomic antics.

While Kim’s regime has not carried out a fourth nuclear test, as feared, it has been conducting provocative missile launches and unleashing a stream of anti-American invective that is colourful even by North Korean standards.

But in Tokyo, the wrestling event is not creating the sorts of waves that Rodman’s trip caused in Washington. In fact, it could even be helpful.

Inoki, whose ties with North Korea date back to his being mentored by Rikidozan, an ethnic Korean wrestler, organised a similar tournament, called “Collision in Korea”, in 1995. His trip this week will mark his 30th visit to Pyongyang.

Meanwhile, Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe, a hardliner who has taken a tough stance against North Korea, has been trying to make progress on a decades-old abduction issue. At least 17 Japanese citizens were abducted during the 1970s and 1980s to train North Korean spies in the Japanese language and ways. While Pyongyang admitted seizing the Japanese nationals and let five of them return home in 2002, it has claimed that the others died in North Korea.

But now Kim’s regime has agreed to open a new investigation into their fate, and Japanese officials are cautiously hopeful that some abductees might still be alive and might be returned. North Korea’s first report from the investigation panel is due next month, and Abe’s government last month lifted some sanctions as a gesture of goodwill.

Inoki, who entered politics by creating his own Sports and Peace party and has long advocated an approach of “world peace through sports”, fancies himself as Japan’s unofficial pointman. In this case, he has something of a track record.

In 1990, just a year after he was elected to parliament, more than 100 Japanese citizens were taken hostage by Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, to be used as human shields against the imminent onset of the Gulf war.

On his own accord, Inoki went to Iraq several times, before organising a “peace festival” incorporating pro wrestling, karate and judo in Baghdad. A few days later, all the remaining hostages were freed (although the Japanese foreign ministry was also negotiating for their release).

While saying that he is not going to Pyongyang to press the abduction issue, Inoki clearly sees himself as having some sway in the matter.

The former wrestler dismisses critics in Tokyo who accuse him of self-promotion. “A character like me is rare,” he said. “I say, ‘I don’t care!’ Courage is essential. It’s important to gain support from your own people, but you need to move half, or one step ahead of everyone ... Someday, someone will recognise that I have acted with goodwill.”

Yet North Korea seems impervious to “soft power” – the idea that countries can get what they want through attraction rather than coercion or force – said the father of the concept, Harvard scholar Joseph Nye.

“When it comes to North Korea, I tend to be a little bit sceptical about these sorts of things,” Nye said, recalling the much-heralded trip that the New York Philharmonic made to Pyongyang in 2008, which did nothing for US-North Korea relations.

This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from the Washington Post