Remembering That One Time Pro Wrestling Came to Pyongyang

This past Sunday, London’s Wembley Stadium played host to more than 81,000 wrestling fans for All In, a landmark anniversary show for All Elite Wrestling (AEW), a new but prominent U.S. rival to Vince McMahon’s juggernaut, WWE. It’s been called the biggest pro wrestling event in history, surpassing the McMahon-run WrestleMania 32 in Arlington, Texas, which saw 80,709 viewers descend upon AT&T Stadium in 2016. However, these assertions often come with caveats. While AEW has termed it “the biggest event in wrestling history,” some publications have limited themselves to calling it the biggest wrestling show in England, while others have curiously referred to it as the all-time record holder for “tickets distributed.” These claims tend to dance around a gargantuan pay-per-view from 1995 that far surpassed the attendance of either company, albeit under strange circumstances: the oft ignored and hard to find Collision In Korea, a two-day North Korean excursion co-run by promotions from the United States and Japan, which drew upwards of 150,000 viewers each night, and even featured boxing legend Muhammad Ali.

The exact number in attendance is often disputed, as is the proportion of viewers who paid to attend—many were allegedly forced to do so. Announcers at the event claimed 165,000 and 190,000 people had shown up on the first and second nights respectively, though wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer reports that the real numbers are likely closer to 150,000 and 165,000. (Exaggerations are par for the course in the wrestling business; even WWE claims its aforementioned Arlington WrestleMania was attended by more than 101,000 people).

While the show’s American wrestlers and English commentators were provided by World Championship Wrestling (WCW)—the Turner-owned rival to WWE, then WWF—Collision In Korea was the brainchild of New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW) founder Anotnio Inoki, who passed away last year. Inoki, a mainstay of the industry in ’70s and ’80s was perhaps the most prolific wrestler to ever emerge from Japan, but in 1989, he followed in his father’s footsteps and entered politics, and was elected to the House of Councillors, the upper house of Japan’s national legislature. However, in 1994, accusations of financial impropriety threatened his career, a scandal that helped thwart his re-election in 1995.

This show had one eye toward the future, since North Korea’s new supreme leader Kim Jong-il had come to power the year prior, and it provided the Kim regime the chance to project a curated image onto the world stage during the country’s ongoing famine.

Eager to rehabilitate his political image, Inoki came up with the idea of a Japanese sporting event in North Korea to improve diplomatic relations between the two countries. This show had one eye toward the future, since North Korea’s new supreme leader Kim Jong-il had come to power the year prior, and it provided the Kim regime the chance to project a curated image onto the world stage during the country’s ongoing famine. But for Inoki, the effort was also tied to his personal history. His mentor in Japan, the technical innovator Rikidōzan—dubbed the father of Japanese pro wrestling—was Korean-born (in Hongwon County, which would eventually become part of North Korea), and he even became a revered propaganda figure in the country after his death in 1963.

Inoki had maintained a positive relationship with the North Korean government during his political stint, so his plans materialized quickly. Under the new regime, visas also began to be issued to Americans more frequently—a rarity in prior years, as noted by a New York Times journalist who attended the Collision event—and so Inoki’s plans also involved bringing American talent into the notoriously secretive nation. While his Japanese wrestling career had mostly wound down, he still made occasional appearances in the United States for WCW (with whom NJPW had a working relationship for the sake of international crossovers). Inoki was to wrangle the participating Japanese talent, while WCW head Eric Bischoff was offered the chance to assemble the American roster who would fly to Pyongyang—an opportunity he readily accepted, since WCW had been trying to keep pace with McMahon’s WWF.

The event was locally dubbed the Pyongyang International Sports and Culture Festival for Peace, given its diplomatic implications between Japan, North Korea, and the United States (the latter wasn’t involved in any governmental capacity, though the show’s American headliner, Ric Flair, has claimed that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was supposed to attend). For a show this enormous, Bischoff needed names that were big enough to rise to the occasion. His immediate go-to was ’80s wrestling mainstay Hulk Hogan, who had been hugely responsible for pro wrestling’s explosion in the United States, but Hogan was quick to refuse. No reasons for this have been publicly cited, though given Hogan’s attempted Hollywood transition at the time, it was likely a combination of risk and political optics (the same reasons Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is unlikely to show up at any of WWE’s events sponsored by the Saudi government). With Hogan out of the equation, the very next person on Bischoff’s list was Flair, the blonde-haired Southern superstar who, though he may not have had the same mainstream appeal as Hogan, was just as iconic to hardcore wrestling fans. Flair was tasked with facing Inoki in the show’s main event, at the end of its second night.

However, the biggest name Bischoff roped in was retired boxing legend Muhammad Ali, who was to be the event’s guest of honor. Ali had previously faced Inoki in an unscripted boxer-wrestler exhibition bout—a precursor to modern Mixed Martial Arts (MMA)—in Tokyo in 1976, which was watched by an estimated 1.4 billion viewers worldwide. However, nearly 20 years later, neither Ali nor Inoki had nearly the same drawing power they once did. News coverage of the event was reportedly scant, and the pay-per-view was bought by only 30,000 people in the United States—a paltry figure compared to WCW’s other shows from that same year, which were purchased by anywhere between 75,000 and 180,000 households.

Locally, it was a different story. While the Pyongyang audience hadn’t had much exposure to American and Japanese wrestling—largely scripted, rehearsed forms of combat, presented with operatic pageantry—the event drew significant interest. The number of people who paid to attend versus those who were instructed to do so remains a matter of debate, but according to ProWrestlingHistory.com, the event’s two nights generated ticket revenues the equivalent of $7.5 million and $8.5 million respectively. While this is difficult to verify, a combined $16 million gate would rank Collision In Korea amongst the most financially successful wrestling events of all time—for comparison, WWE’s record-setting WrestleMania 32 earned just over $17 million.

But what of the event itself, and the experience on the ground? The broadcast was to feature a total of 15 matches, with occasional breaks in between to show off dazzling, parade-like opening ceremonies welcoming the talent and celebrating North Korea, recorded earlier at the stadium. However, behind the scenes, things weren’t quite so glamorous. While speaking in the wrestling exposé docu-series Dark Side of The Ring, several participating wrestlers noted the authoritarian strictness of their North Korean handlers who confiscated their passports and chaperoned them to various publicity events. This culminated in a photo op where Flair was asked to read a statement noting the country’s ability to dominate the United States (Flair refused, but instead praised North Korea as “beautiful and peaceful”). The Dark Side of the Ring episode also fueled an anecdote that has frequently made the rounds: given the crowd’s unfamiliarity with wrestling, they allegedly sat in near-complete silence for both nights, with the notable exception of the Flair-Inoki match, during which they came alive and began cheering wildly for Inoki because of his ties to Rikidōzan.

When Inoki takes the stage on night two—especially when his bout with Flair reaches its climax and he emerges victorious—this becomes one of the rare instances when the audience atmosphere approaches electric, though the contrast between the show’s loudest and quietest moments has been embellished over time.

Upon revisiting the first and second nights on YouTube, this dichotomy of silence and sound is a clear exaggeration, but it’s rooted in some amount of truth. While most of the show is scored by a sustained audience buzz—accompanied by only occasional shouts and whistles—there are very few moments (especially on the first night) where the crowd reactions ebb and flow, or grow more vocal in any meaningful way. There’s also a distinct absence of the kind of sports chants one normally sees at wrestling events in the United States, Japan and elsewhere. But when Inoki takes the stage on night two—especially when his bout with Flair reaches its climax and he emerges victorious—this becomes one of the rare instances when the audience atmosphere approaches electric, though the contrast between the show’s loudest and quietest moments has been embellished over time.

It doesn’t help that these low-quality YouTube uploads remain the only way to watch the event, though ironically, its relative erasure from the Internet may be rooted in its massive attendance in the first place. Since the show was produced by WCW, it’s now owned by WWE, who purchased WCW from Turner Broadcasting in 2001. While WWE’s streaming platforms feature plenty of archival shows, Collision In Korea remains curiously absent from its extensive catalog. Bischoff believes this to be an attempt by McMahon to rewrite wrestling history, and position WWE as the undisputed industry leader. Of all the exaggerations associated with Collision In Korea, from the crowd’s supposed silence to its colossal size, the biggest exaggeration of all is that it didn’t happen.

Unfortunately, the show did little to improve diplomacy between the three nations, and its only material impact was an image of Inoki lifting and tossing Flair to the ground that was subsequently printed on leaflets and dropped over Seoul as anti-American propaganda (though there’s little record of this having any significant effect). These pamphlets, like Collision In Korea itself, are mostly historical curios, and reminders of one of the strangest periods in both American professional wrestling—right before WCW found its groove and kicked off a boom period by rivaling WWF—and in the life of Antonio Inoki, whose storied career and history are inseparable from both Japanese politics and entertainment. The one thing the show does have, though, are its humongous attendance figures, which are unlikely to be beaten (let alone rivaled) anytime soon, whether as a result of strong-arming, or curiosity over pro wrestling’s pomp and circumstance.