Read Sex, Lies, and Headlocks for Free Online Page A

only one who wasn’t in a partying mood was Knievel, who’d convinced himself that he wouldn’t make it off the 108-foot ramp in the bottle-shaped craft known as the Sky-Cycle X-2. The moment the rocket’s thrusters started firing, a petrified Knievel threw the switch that deployed its chute. As a result, the sky-cycle barely cleared the ramp before falling 413 harmless feet to the canyon below.
    Not only was the jump a bust, only a fraction of the theaters that showed it were full. “The problem,” says Arum, “is that we did too good a job of selling it. Parents were scared to let kids see their big hero die.” With sales only a fraction of what they had hoped, Knievel’s promised $6 million payday shrank to $250,000—roughly the amount that Vinnie and Linda lost when they couldn’t recoup the deposits they’d put down on the theaters.
    Still, the experience convinced Arum that the McMahon kid had spark. That is why he called Vinnie again in early 1976, when Antonio Inoki, then the biggest wrestling star and promoter in Japan, offered $3 million if Ali would fly to Tokyo for a wrestling/boxing match with Inoki in which he’d lose. Arum, who was in the midst of arranging a third fight between Ali and Ken Norton, was intrigued by the idea. But he was out of his league when it came to wrestling. Vinnie’s solution was to stage matches between boxers and wrestlers at six stadiums around the United States as a prelude to the closed-circuit showing of the main event. Arum liked that fine. Now all that was left was convincing Ali to bite.
    As Arum would recall the story, Vinnie flew with him in the spring of 1976 to Chicago to meet Ali in a gym on the South Side. Ali loved wrestling. In fact, he’d patterned his preening and posturing after Gorgeous George, who made frequent stops in Louisville when Ali, then known as Cassius Clay, was growing up. But he blanched at taking a dive. The champ, surrounded by his Muslim retinue, listened skeptically as McMahon laid out his plan. For the first several rounds, Ali would pound the lumbering, six-foot-one, 220-pound Inoki, looking every bit like the champion that he was. But in the fifth round, Inoki would come out with a razor in his mouth and secretly use it to cut open his forehead. When Ali saw that he was gushing blood, he’d beg the referee to stop the fight. At this point, Ali started smiling, seeing the possibilities. McMahon went on, suggesting that while Ali’s back was turned Inoki would give him a enzuijiri —his trademark kick to the back of the head. Japanese fans would be able to keep their champ, while Ali would return to America insisting that he’d been screwed.
    “Okay, “said Ali.” I’ll do it.”
    Unfortunately, Vinnie failed to mention his plan to the advance men who were waiting for Ali when his flight landed in Tokyo. When he asked them when rehearsals were going to start, he was met with blank stares. No one knew what he was talking about.
    “It was a mess,” says Arum. “Ali thought he was being set up. Everyone was threatening to break everyone else’s legs. Vinnie wouldn’t come to Japan. I had to stay right beside Ali the whole time.”
    Eventually, a plan was worked out to assuage the champ. The two would fight for real, in what is known as a shoot match. But to favor Ali, certain conditions had to be met, among them that Inoki would have to keep both hands and a foot on the ground the whole time. Inoki was furious at being literally backed into a corner, but he agreed and the day of the match came prepared to make Ali pay. The Japanese legend may have spent the match like a spider on his back, but he kicked Ali so furiously that clots welled in Ali’s legs. “By the eighth round Ali’s legs were bleeding,” Arum remembers. “Ali kept running after him, yelling,’ Get up, you little yellow mother-fucker, get up!’ ”
    Ticket sales were only slightly better than for the Snake River fiasco. Once again, Vinnie’s big payday