Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
Traditionally, “super cards” in professional wrestling involving several promotions rarely work out. Promoters and wrestlers will argue and refuse to do what is best for business. That leaves the fans the ones to suffer for inflated egos and jealousy. You can look at the unmitigated disaster that was Superclash III as an example of how a wrestling super card worked out.
While these super card shows usually fail in some way…it hasn’t stopped ambitious promoters in trying to do them. In 1996, legendary Japanese wrestler/promoter and politician Antonio Inoki had a vision for one of these shows that would take place on United States soil. Inoki was a man who had always envisioned himself becoming a huge star in the U.S…and tried several times. This venture that Inoki proposed was to promote the idea of worldwide peace. He would use the art known as pro wrestling as the platform in which to accomplish this goal.
The event was to be known as the ‘World Wrestling Peace Festival’ and would in his mind, involve every major wrestling promotion around the world. Inoki had planned to host this monumental event at the 100,000 plus seat Los Angeles Olympic Coliseum. The same site where the WWF attempted to host Wrestlemania VII. Just like the WWF before him, lack of ticket sales forced the show to moved to the much smaller Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena.
Antonio Inoki had commitments from several promotions including the company he founded in New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michinoku Pro, AAA and EMLL based in Mexico, World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and the NWA here in the states also agreed to send contingents. Absent from this list were both ECW and the WWF….both of whom wanted nothing to do with the event. In ECW’s case, Paul Heyman still had serious gripes with WCW over his firing years earlier that involved a lawsuit.
On the other hand, the World Wrestling Federation declined and their excuse was that the company had a scheduled house show on the other side of the country in Florida. While that was indeed true, the WWF still could have sent a wrestler or two to the event. The fact was Vince McMahon didn’t want to have his wrestlers appear in anything that wasn’t controlled by him. Without the addition of the WWF and its powerful advertising machine…..the World Wrestling Peace Festival lacked serious hype and promotion in the States.
Despite the absence of the WWF, Inoki’s event had forty wrestlers from six different countries involved. He also had advertised that boxing great Muhammad Ali would be in attendance, but because of a prior commitment, sent a letter that was read to the fans at the arena instead. The Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena had a capacity of close to 17,000, but only a little less than 6,000 fans attended. According to Dave Meltzer, many of that was papered with freebie tickets.
The card was as follows:
KGB vs. Sgt. Craig Pittman
Jim Neidhart vs. Bobby Bradley
Akira Hokuto & Lady Apache vs. Bull Nakano & Neftali
Chris Benoit vs. Alex Wright
Rey Misterio Jr. & Ultimo Dragon vs. Heavy Metal & Psicosis
Lex Luger vs. Masa Saito
El Hijo del Santo vs. Negro Casas
Dr. Wagner Jr., El Gran Markus Jr. & Silver King vs. Atlantis, Dos Caras & Hector Garza
Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Black Cat
Cibernetico & Pierroth Jr. vs. La Parka & Perro Aguayo
Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Konnan vs. Chris Jericho
Jushin Thunder Liger vs. The Great Sasuke
WCW title Match
Sting vs. The Giant (the Champion)
The Main Event
Antonio Inoki & Dan Severn vs. Oleg Taktarov & Yoshiaki Fujiwara
There was also a triple threat match booked between Terry Funk against Sabu and Brian Pillman, but had to be scrapped because Pillman was involved in a serious car accident. The crowd was silent for most of the card, but got strong reactions for Rey Misterio Jr and Chris Benoit. WCW head Eric Bischoff was in attendance for the show….despite WCW refusing to promote the event themselves. It is believed that Bischoff was so impressed with the Rey Misterio match…it led him to offer Rey a WCW contract.
All proceeds to the World Wrestling Peace Festival was to go to local Los Angeles high schools to fund wrestling and Judo programs. No word on what the event grossed overall, but one would have to imagine the entire show was a financial loss. This was Inoki’s second attempt at this type of show promoting world peace through professional wrestling. The first of course was the event in North Korea aka Collision in Korea. That event set all kinds of attendance records, but because it was held in North Korea, it was believed the government forced people to attend.
Even though the World Wrestling Peace Festival did not do the business that Inoki envisioned it would…it did not deter him in the slightest. Just a few months after this show, Inoki began planning for the next one. He had planned to have the show in either Mexico City or Cuba. Alas, that event never came to fruition and thus ended the World Wrestling Peace Festival.