♪
[Narrator] In 1995, a group of professional wrestlers
were deployed to communist-ruled North Korea,
to partake in one of the most bizarre diplomatic
missions ever conceived.
What could be more international than having
two big shows in Pyongyang, North Korea?
Vince can't do that. (laughs)
I run out and I look up, and I actually see the stadium,
and the crowd, and the people.
And I just stop.
Over 300,000 locals gathered to witness Collision in Korea.
It was unbelievable.
A wrestling extravaganza orchestrated in the name of
world peace, which in reality,
casts wrestlers as unwitting players in a high-risk act
of political theatre.
You realize you're surrounded by a bunch of
people that think you're the devil.
I mean, we were totally under their control.
You walk out the room, bam, they're there.
You go in the library, bam, those guys was there.
Under the strict surveillance of North Korean authorities...
We're living the wrestling life.
You hit North Korea, man, that shit stops, like boom!
Wrestlers found themselves trapped
in a surreal nightmare.
It was like being in The Twilight Zone.
And helplessly in over their heads,
leaving some fighting for their lives.
Next thing we know, somebody's punching somebody.
I'm gonna run, jump off these stairs,
and I'm gonna curb stomp him to death.
I mean, it was just like, thumbs down, kill 'em.
♪
(birds chirping)
♪
My name is Eric Bischoff,
coming to you from Cody, Wyoming.
Spent a couple minutes in the
professional wrestling business...
And now I spend all my time looking back upon it.
(chuckles)
Well, as I said when I first got to WCW
as a announcer, I was like a fly on the wall, you know.
I got to see things happening from a perspective
that sometimes the current management didn't see.
There was a lot of financial abuse,
and some fraud and theft that I saw a lot of in WCW
as that fly on the wall.
So, when I finally got the opportunity to run WCW and
was made Vice President, I instituted a lot of changes.
By 1994, WCW was still seen as a regional promotion,
and if it had any chance of competing against the
powerhouse brand of WWF, Eric Bischoff had to reach
a wider, global wrestling audience.
Make no mistake about it, WCW is set to dominate the
globe when it comes to professional wrestling.
[Eric] One of the first things I did was reestablish a
failed relationship with New Japan Pro Wrestling.
You know, WCW had engaged in some...
shaky tactics and, and left the Japanese with a very
bitter taste in their mouth in terms of doing business
with Americans.
[Announcer] From the land of the rising sun, The Great...
Muta!
So, we wanted to reengage New Japan Pro Wrestling and,
just to see if I could possibly resurrect that
relationship and it went really well and we did,
and I started bringing a lot of the top Japanese stars
over to the United States on a real consistent basis.
[Japanese Announcer] Steiner Brothers!
But also, to do the same thing with our
WCW talent over in Japan.
[Japanese commentary]
Because that way, our talent was getting more exposure
in that market, their talent was getting great exposure
in our market and everybody's happy.
With increased international exposure,
WCW was gaining traction, but still lagged behind WWF
when it came to drawing power and
staging mammoth events.
Over 80,000 fans!
All that was about to change when Eric Bischoff was
offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Antonio Inoki, who was the Chairman of
New Japan Pro Wrestling, founder,
reached out to me, asking me if I would be
willing and interested in bringing all our WCW roster
over to North Korea to compete in a peace festival.
Antonio Inoki, wow, he's, he's really kind of an enigma.
He was the Vince McMahon of Japan is probably
the best way to say it.
He was one of the most well-known wrestling
personalities in Japan, and a great athlete.
(cheering)
He was just the most popular professional wrestler
I've ever seen in my life,
and I've been around almost off of 'em.
I'm Professional Wrestler, Scott Norton.
[Commentary] Now... oh!
I was touring in Japan, doing my arm wrestling stuff.
I was the world champion, and that's what led me
to be a professional wrestler.
And so, that's when I started learning about Inoki.
One of his favourite moves in wrestling,
he would slap the taste buds out your mouth.
And when he slapped you, it was in there.
What's up? How y'all doing?
This is 2 Cold Scorpio.
One of the most famous high flyers in the world.
Waz up!
Scorpio's going to the top.
- Oh! - (cheering)
Oh, my! Oh, my gosh!
After me being trained in Japan and being there for years,
I would have to let people know,
Inoki is somebody like Hulk Hogan,
but two times above that level in Japan.
While Inoki was operating his wrestling company,
he was also a fairly high profile politician.
And, became really one of the most famous people in Japan.
Inoki constantly defied the limits
of professional wrestling
by staging events that made international headlines
for their shocking audacity.
In 1976, Inoki boldly combined wrestling and
boxing for a match against the legendary Muhammad Ali.
He also used the sport to successfully negotiate the
release of Japanese hostages held in Iraq.
But bringing wrestlers into the heart of North Korea
was designed to eclipse them all.
(speaking Japanese)
Among Inoki's more unpopular moves
were frequent trips to North Korea and meeting with
officials from the reclusive regime.
Antonio Inoki asked me if I could help him
get a meeting with Muhammad Ali.
You know, I called Muhammad Ali and he got excited about it
immediately because he lived most of his life
trying to be an ambassador to world peace and he really
believed in breaking down barriers of cultures and
religion and race, and he didn't hesitate, at all.
So, I thought, man, if I put that piece of the
puzzle together, I get the rest of my team together...
sure, I've never been to Pyongyang, North Korea.
Let's do that!
(laughs) That was a comedy.
Inoki wanted Hogan.
Hulk was the biggest name in wrestling at that point in time.
It would make a lot of news, it would be good for Inoki
and his political career.
I did ask, but it was a short answer.
"Hm... can't make that one, brother."
(laughs) That was it, man.
It was a five-minute conversation.
Ric Flair.
- Woo! - (cheering)
While he may not have been
quite as popular as Hulk Hogan, nationwide,
he had such a fantastic reputation of being able to
put on a great match with just about anybody...
to my face, he was all for it,
he was excited about it.
I think, subsequently, I learned that his feelings were hurt
just a little bit knowing he was the second choice.
Alright... we're sitting in the locker room,
just got done working out before a show.
Hattori and Masa come into the locker room.
They go, "Scott-san?" I said, "Yes?"
He says, "We have big match, North Korea, next month.
You on it."
Then I look around the locker room and the
Japanese boys are just going nuts,
and they're squabbling back and forth, they're talking.
I'm going, what the hell is going on?
So, I went over to Chono, I says,
"Chono," I says, "What's going on?"
He says, "We go North Korea?"
And I says, "That's what Masa just told me,
we're going to North Korea." He says, "They want us dead.
They don't like us very much."
(laughing) And I go, "Okay."
[Eric] It was a little bit controversial,
which is one of the reasons that Inoki was trying to
establish this rapport with the North Koreans because
the Japanese and North Koreans had been
killing each other for thousands of years,
and there's no love lost between
North Koreans and Japanese.
And tonight, after just returning from
a tour of Japan...
For me, I was very excited to go to
another place in the world.
Every place I've ever been, South Africa, India,
everything I've ever been is because of wrestling.
So, for me to be able to have a chance to go over to
North Korea was like, man, I've never been
to a communist country.
I had no idea what it was gonna be like.
I didn't know the difference being in America,
being in a communist country,
I had no clue, none whatsoever.
Ah... It's definitely a different experience for me.
[Eric] When it came to traveling to North Korea,
the United States government, even then,
viewed North Korea as a much more hostile
potential enemy, so Americans were not
supposed to be in North Korea.
And even going to the federal government to get
permission to do something, it could take 6 months to
get a yes or a no, so I just said,
"Yeah, I'm just gonna go."
My boss didn't even know I was doing it.
Joining Ric Flair, Scott Norton,
and 2 Cold Scorpio on the trip would be
Road Warrior Hawk,
the Steiner Brothers, Chris Benoit,
and some of New Japan Pro Wrestling's top performers.
But no one could match the star power of one of
the world's most recognizable celebrities.
We found out that Muhammad Ali was gonna be
on the tour, biggest...
boxing hero of all time, you know,
and I'm just going, holy smokes.
So, when we got to the airport in Japan,
it's me, Flair, Steiners, Hawk, Benoit.
We're all standing there, and the airport's just packed.
There's reporters everywhere.
Then all of a sudden, this commotion comes rolling in.
And it's Muhammad Ali with his entourage.
And all the reporters that were on us just went...
(shuffling)
And all of a sudden, he comes right to me,
and he started doing magic tricks for everybody.
♪
And we all, "Whoa!"
And he had the biggest smile on his face.
It just made him happy.
Then a lot of people were a lot more comfortable
because you got Inoki and Muhammad Ali,
they're huge, huge names.
The North Korean military sent over a plane...
to Tokyo. You know, you couldn't, you know,
call up Delta and get a flight to Pyongyang.
That was the moment, when we all got on that plane, and...
realized it was a military transport,
wasn't the safest-looking plane.
Certainly, not comfortable, you know,
not what the guys were used to.
This plane was like made in the 40s,
and I'm telling ya, it was a piece of garbage.
Flair was the funniest. "We can't fly on this thing.
We can't... "He's just losing it, I mean...
(laughs)
[Eric] And it just kind of set the tone before we even got
out of Japan, you knew you were, you were about
to do something quite different.
I think that's when I started sensing people
getting a little nervous.
[Scorpio] So, we're flying over and, man,
that was quite scary to me.
I had the window seat so, for me,
I seen the south side of South Korea,
then all of a sudden, as you get closer to the border,
you see all these cannons and, you know, set up,
and army stuff set up, aiming toward the north.
But we kept flying over, we seen all the north tanks and
shit pointing toward the south on this ridge,
it's like, man, this look like war time.
I was like, okay, what am I really getting myself into?
And when the plane landed, they finally brought
the stairs out, and we got off the plane.
We were all standing around...
Looking around and there's nobody.
And, we're getting our bags.
We're walking to the airport.
Once we got inside, it was caked with dust this high.
It was unbelievable.
Nobody's been in this room forever.
And all of a sudden, these military people
started coming up to us. "Where's your passport?"
I had it in an inside pocket,
and I went in and I grabbed my passport like this and
I'm looking back at my bag, and he just snatched it.
I said, "What the are you doing?"
You don't lose your passport when you do what we do.
They took my Walkman, they took the tapes.
Anything to do with America,
they didn't want it in their country.
And Flair went nuts.
He goes, "Scott, they got our passports.
Why would they take everything?"
They hated us. I mean, you got that right away.
I'm in a communist country. You took my passport.
Now what's gonna happen to us?
♪
Going to North Korea is a really strange experience.
It's like going through the looking glass.
It's an utterly different society for somebody like
myself who'd grown up in the States.
We are accompanied by guides,
and we do have some limits on where else
we can go in the country.
I'm Mike Chinoy.
I was a foreign correspondent for CNN,
and one of the assignments that I had was to cover
this big wrestling event in North Korea.
The wrestling event in 1995
has to rank as one of the weirdest,
most bizarre experiences that I witnessed
as a journalist because you had this combination
of North Korea, which is remote,
isolated, highly regimented,
largely cut off from the rest of the world
and certainly cut off from North America.
And then, suddenly, in the middle of this,
you had this collection of eccentric characters from
the world of wrestling, and Muhammad Ali,
showing up in the capitol of North Korea and being
part of one of the mass events which the North Koreans
are masters of staging so, it was this absolutely
bizarre collision of what almost, you could call,
alien civilizations.
Upon their arrival, the wrestlers are greeted
with unsettling hostility, but unbeknownst to them,
this is only the beginning of what's to come.
We were paired off into two's.
And we were escorted to our cars that assigned
an attaché who was going to be with us 24/7.
And, driven into Pyongyang.
My attaché, she told me that I was only the 7th American
to step foot in North Korea that hadn't been
either shot down or captured.
Right there, that moment,
that puts everything into perspective.
And this is the pass that they gave us,
when we got there.
It's in Korean. My nationality.
They wanted to keep track of us,
you know, that was, that was the big, main thing.
My name is Sonny Onoo.
I was the evil Japanese manager
for World Championship Wrestling.
My job started out with, you know,
liaison officer between WCW and New Japan Pro Wrestling.
I was told by my government, "Hey,
we can't guarantee your safety. You shouldn't go."
We were evil, including the Japanese.
That's what their propaganda is,
and so, the first thing we were told is,
"You can't do this. You can't do that."
And, you know, "By the way, don't rape our women."
Japan colonized North Korea at the beginning of the
20th century, and the Japanese ruled North Korea
until the end of World War II.
It was a brutal colonial rule and there is tremendous
bad feeling toward the Japanese
that persists until this day.
The first stop on our way to the hotel was to
pay homage to the dear leader, Kim Il-sung,
who had died a year before.
North Korean government would hand us bouquets of
flowers and we all were forced to walk up the steps
and lay our flowers at the foot of the statue
of the dear leader.
And then, the North Korean news media would film us.
They wanted it to look like we were so excited to be in
North Korea, we flew all the way there so we could
pay homage to the dear leader.
We are all very touched and honoured to be here today.
The North Koreans were always trying to leverage
these visits for propaganda purposes and
subtlety is not a North Korean strong point.
When we got to the hotel,
we had to carry our luggage up 7 floors.
We're big guys, man. We don't do stairs very well.
The military guys, they would follow you around.
When I got to my room, he stopped about
10 feet from the hall...
Opened my door and I stepped inside my room.
I take my bags and I looked around the room...
the guy is following us,
they're just hanging outside your room.
We had like four guys spying on us,
watching us at all times.
It's like, man, we can't do nothing.
So, as far as really trying to pass the time,
sit in your room, try to watch TV,
and all you get is three government channels,
all political.
So, it was like, why even bother?
So, it was really kind of, drive you kind of nuts.
♪
[Scott] Hawk was right in the room next to me, right?
So, I step out the door, and as soon as I started walking,
that little dude started following me.
Then I realized...
that the other guy's about 10 feet down here,
that's at Hawk's room.
♪
I'm talking to Hawk, I'm going, you know,
"One of these little bastard's gonna... with me, Mike,
and I'm gonna take him out."
I mean, there was no reason to stay in this hotel room.
Me, Benoit, Hawk, and a couple guys go down
to the lobby, and they had a pool table.
And I was just as surprised as hell they had a pool table.
I said, "Well, let's play some pool.'
Anyways, I mean, do something.
It took me two hours for that gal at the desk
to give me the balls.
They had to clear it through the military guys.
It was crazy. So, one time I shot...
and the ball jumped and it went off the table...
(thud)
That ball went bing, bing, bing,
on hard marble floors.
It pissed them off so damn bad.
The pool game was over and, for that ball leaving the table,
they looked at you like, "How dare you?
How dare you to do something like that."
They took the balls away from us.
You know, he starts smashing 'em,
boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
So, we're just standing there like, what the...?
We were getting pissed off, the way we were being treated.
Hawk didn't like it, Scottie Steiner didn't like it.
And I was pissed to a point where...
grab one of these little bastards and,
you know, give it to 'em.
Masa just got me off to the side, said,
"Scott, you've got to settle down.
Just promise me you'll get through these next four days."
And I says, "Alright, man." I mean, in my mind, I'm going,
what the 'F' are we doing in this country?
Nobody wants us here.
As the harsh reality of their situation comes
crashing down, the wrestlers find themselves
strangers in a strange land.
With tensions on the rise and tempers flaring,
they must adapt to their surroundings or face
the dire consequences that await.
♪
Struggling to adjust to the surreal circumstances
in North Korea, the wrestling outsiders
search for ways to cope.
[Eric] So, by the time I got to North Korea,
I was kind of craving a run.
So, I went to bed one night and planned on
getting up early and running.
Didn't even think that I should probably
let my attaché know.
I thought, well, I'm just gonna get up and
go for a run.
I'll be back before I'm supposed to be anywhere else
and boom, it'll be fine. I took off by myself.
It's dark out, the streets were completely deserted.
I'm running, I'm running, I'm running. Sun's coming up.
Now, all of a sudden, I see people
starting to come out into the street,
and as I'm running through the streets of Pyongyang,
they're parting.
They were looking at me like
something out of a monster movie.
Now the school kids are coming out.
The look of terror...
they weren't afraid of me,
they were terrorized by my presence.
You know, I don't want to see terror in anybody's eyes,
especially kids.
You got this American that's supposed to be
the idea of evil...
That they have never... mind you,
most of these people have never seen an American so,
you know, this guy's coming, running at them.
Can you imagine what these people thought?
When I saw the look of terror in people's eyes as
I was running down the street, it really made a big
impression on me and made me realize just how easy it is
to foment hate and fear, and how dangerous that is.
I got back to the hotel and, my attaché was there.
She was livid.
And I thought, God, if I don't see her tomorrow,
it's because they're gonna shoot her for letting me
go out and run through the streets in downtown Pyongyang.
I was literally concerned for her.
♪
Yeah.
No.
No, that...
Not until this moment.
(laughs) Wow. Well, it all started out with,
prior to even going to North Korea,
I had heat with Flair because of an incident that
happened overseas on one of Ric Flair's trips that
he had booked, I got into some trouble.
I felt like Ric Flair was messing with me,
I got fired from WCW.
And still to this day, I don't give a damn
what he say, I still will feel that, truly,
that it was because of him.
I let it build up, 7, 8 years,
and I'm still holding a grudge against somebody
who I think was the cause of me getting fired.
And so now, we're all in North Korea,
going to all of these sights.
And everywhere we went, Hawk was riding with Flair.
Well, Hawk decided this day he wants to
ride the bus this day. So, he comes out on the bus.
So, Ric Flair comes out of the hotel,
we're all on the bus.
So, Ric Flair, he's kind of looking around like this and,
Hawk goes, "Man, he, he looks like he's looking for somebody.
Maybe he's looking for me.
Maybe he wants me to ride with him again."
"that pussy. Let him ride by himself."
Hawk said, "What did you say?"
I says, "You didn't hear me?" I says, "... that pussy.
Let him ride by himself."
I said, "What part of it you didn't hear,
was it the '... him, let him ride by himself?'
or was it the 'pussy' part?"
And he got mad about it and he came back there and
he called me the N word, he said,
"You ...," and he swung, he missed.
I hit that mother... er about five, six times,
and I was wearing his ...ing ass out.
Scorp said something to Hawk,
and Mike responded back in his typical way,
and I guess Scorp...
hit him and dazed him a couple times.
Now he's bleeding from his face,
bleeding from his mouth, and all this.
Japanese boys grab me, I fall down in the seat.
You know, they're holding me down.
He comes over, gets on me, he's trying to punch me.
I'm ducking and dodging, he can't hit me.
I jumped on him, stuck my finger in his eye and
I was on my way out with his eye.
I had his eye halfway out of its socket and stuff and,
the Japanese boys jumped on me.
"Oh, Scorp, stop"...
And then we kind of got up, I ripped open my shirt and
I just gave him a 'wow',
a straight kick right in the face.
Backed him up, you know, and that's when it
slowed him down and the boys had enough distance
to get between us and calm us down.
He gave me his best shot and, tell ya,
if that's his best shot, bro, you in trouble.
This was when Mike was battling his Hepatitis C and
he was on Interferon.
When you take that Interferon,
it makes you very sick,
very flu like symptoms and just very ill.
And, you know, Scorp can think what he wants...
but, the regular Mike...
would 'a killed his ass.
♪
When we got back to the hotel,
I wanted to call home and call my wife.
I've been trying to contact her for three days.
I get through to my wife. I says, "Hey, babe."
She goes, "Where the hell you been?"
I said, "Tammy, you don't understand what kind of,
what we're going through here," and I'm trying to
explain to her the situation.
She ain't gonna have nothing to do with it.
She thinks that I'm out partying with the guys.
And I says, "Tammy, you don't understand
what kind of shithole I'm in here."
And all of a sudden, the phone went click.
I thought she hung up on me.
I took the phone, I'm throwing it down,
I'm just going, "What the 'F'?"
♪
Then all of a sudden, somebody pounds on my door.
♪
And here's some guy,
this guy could speak perfect English.
And he's telling me, "You're coming with us."
With a dangerous new line crossed,
their fate now hangs in the balance
between life and death.
♪
After wrestler Scott Norton's phone call with his wife
is intercepted, North Korean officials materialize
and he is forcibly taken from his hotel room.
And I'm looking at these guys, man, and I mean...
They'd as soon shoot me right there and then.
I'm just going, "What the hell is going on here?"
Now, nobody knows where I'm at.
I'm in this room...
I mean, it just felt like at any point in time,
I was just gonna be dealt with.
It was like a movie.
I swear to God,
and I'm just sitting there, I'm going, oh, my lord,
they could care less if I lived or died.
♪
Then, this guy comes in. You could just tell,
the way he came in the room, that he was the top dude.
And then he spoke English to me and he told me,
he says, "You can't say nothing wrong about North Korea."
And I says, "I mean, you know what I said to my wife?"
I says, "We were just back and forth.
I've been trying to call home."
He says, "No more phone calls, you don't talk to nobody.
We hear you say something bad about North Korea.
That's it."
I mean, he's pointing his finger at me, he's saying,
"You can't say anything bad about North Korea.
This is a superior country."
He's telling me all this bullshit,
and I'm getting it now. I mean, I'm just like,
"I ain't gonna say a word about North Korea."
And I was just soaked, freaking.
I'll do anything to get out of this room.
I apologized. I mean, this is serious.
And the looks on these people's face,
there's no doubt in my mind they'd just put
a bullet in my head.
You know, after he'd been interrogated,
then I think Mr. Inoki's people,
or New Japan people, got him out of there and,
and I'm sure they were told to make sure to tell him
to watch what he says.
Finally, "You go now."
I got to my room and I'm just going,
"Oh, my god. What just happened here?"
Can't mess with these people, Scott.
But, you think they might have had a little talk with us
and give us a little heads up on this stuff.
They just told you as you went,
you know what I mean?
Before the grand event is to finally kick off,
the wrestlers are ushered to one last
propaganda opportunity, a visit to a sacred tomb
honouring the founder of Korea's first kingdom.
We finally get to this 5-year-old hundred
temple site that we gotta go look at.
I ain't got no damn clue who it is.
So, anyways, we're walking and we're walking,
and the next thing you know, we notice Muhammad Ali
is taking his jacket off.
And he rolled his sleeves up,
and he started jogging up the stairs.
And, you know, we're following Ali,
and all of a sudden, Ali got to the top.
♪
And he's shadow boxing. It was unbelievable.
And here's Muhammad Ali just snapping them off,
boom, boom, bang!
And he's dancing around and he's doing like
all these, shuffling a little bit.
And he was moving like it was the old times, man.
He's just having the time of his life.
I mean, we're the only people in the world saw this.
And we're just like blown away.
You know, that's Ali, brother.
I mean, it was unbelievable.
That, within itself, made my whole trip.
♪
So, as we make our way out of the temple and...
we're making our way down the stairs,
I finally go up to Hawk.
I says, "Look, bro," I said, "we're supposed to be
over here on a peace treaty," and I said,
"and we're over here acting like mother... ing fools.
We're fighting amongst each other, Americans."
He walks three steps in front of me,
turns and swings as hard as he can,
hits me...
I don't go down. I look at him like he's crazy.
I jump after him, I go after him.
The Japanese boys grab me, snatch me out of the air,
and I started going off.
Cameras are on us, cameras is filming.
I'm saying, "You ...ing pussy!"
I said, "That's all you got? That's all you got?"
I was like, "You hit me with your best shot,
that's all you got?" I said, "I'm gonna kill you!"
And so, now, I'm thinking street smarts.
I'm 'a get him, I'm 'a hurt him.
♪
So, we had to go to that special state dinner,
that's where they had the stainless steel chopsticks.
So, I was taking one of the pair of stainless steel
chopsticks, eat with it, drop one,
pick it up, slid it into my pocket.
Grabbed another one, did the same thing,
dropped it, slid it into my pocket.
♪
Me and Chris had to share a room, Chris Benoit.
And we're back at the room and Chris is sitting there
looking at me and he's watching me and...
all of a sudden, I open up the window sill and I pull
out the chopsticks, and the window sill
is all rough concrete.
I'm sharpening the stainless steel chopsticks on the window,
bringing 'em to more of a point.
Chris is like, "What are you doing?"
I said, "Man, I'm making a shiv."
He goes, "What?" I was, like,
"Yeah, I'm gonna stab that mother... er."
I was taping the ends together, like, I know how to make a shiv,
you know what I'm saying. My dad ain't been to prison
and don't know how to do this shit with no reason.
I know how to do this shit.
I'm like, okay, I'm gonna get him.
I'm gonna take him out. Chris just said,
"Man, don't do it, man."
He's like, "Man, you don't want to do that, man.
If you kill Hawk over here, you will just be here
for the rest of your life." What am I gonna do?
I can't let this punk get away with it.
You know, we're gonna have to settle this.
♪
After surviving days of grueling conditions and
life threatening situations, the wrestlers head to the
massive May Day Stadium where festivities
are about to commence.
And I'm riding with Ric, and we're driving
down the road and two lanes...
Where nothing but people walking to the show.
And I says, "Ric, man, we're really drawing a crowd here.
I mean, these people really want to see this."
And all of a sudden, the driver goes, "No,"
he says, "they don't want to come."
He says, "If they don't show up, they get a bullet in the head.
Forced attendance."
And I'm just going, "You got to be kidding me."
We got there our first night,
170,000 people there.
And I thought, oh, my God.
Antonio Inoki is a genius.
This is... amazing!
We're leaving WrestleMania in the dirt!
The way that you had over a hundred and something
thousand people working and
moving together and flashing all at the same time,
it was mind blowing.
You didn't even have to be high to trip off that.
I mean, it was straight up mind blowing.
Their show made the half time of the Super Bowl
look like a high school.
I'm not kidding ya, it was just unbelievable.
Before the matches started, we were all jacked, man.
We thought, this is gonna be awesome.
And then the matches start, and I realize that none of
these people have a clue what they're watching,
why they're watching it...
It makes no sense to them.
First match, went out there, it was quieter than it is
in this room right now doing this interview.
And that's hard to do.
♪
Hawk, during his match, stood on the second rope
and yelled, and he says, "What in the 'F'
are you even doing here, you rotten..."
And he cussed the crowd out. (laughs)
♪
This is a society where
this kind of extravagant display
of people throwing themselves around,
especially, for example, the female wrestlers...
must have been utterly alien to the North Koreans.
I wrestled Hashimoto the first night in a main event.
The North Koreans just stood there and watched us.
We never got a reaction to anything.
Just, this stuff doesn't happen in this business.
And you're just busting your tail trying to get these people
to respond to you and nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
The challenge to engage the crowd would now fall
on the shoulders of promoter Antonio Inoki,
whose connection to the people of North Korea
was even deeper than it seemed.
For Inoki, this event would also pay tribute to his
fallen mentor Rikidozan, a wrestling icon in Japan
who struggled to keep his North Korean nationality
a secret until it was too late.
As the story goes,
he was murdered by Japanese gangsters in a bar.
♪
The Japanese Yakuza,
which is their version of the mafia,
killed him because he was North Korean.
♪
And, he wasn't Japanese,
and he was becoming very, very popular.
In the North Korean mythology,
his death becomes this glorious, tragic thing
wherein his final breaths he expresses
his loyalty to North Korea.
♪
And the fact that Inoki had this association with him
gave Inoki credibility in North Korea eyes.
The North Koreans understood the connection
between Inoki and Rikidozan.
He got kind of the hometown treatment.
Ric Flair, they didn't know what to make of Ric Flair.
Bleach blond hair, sequins robe.
They didn't understand it.
Again, this match starts, and it's quiet.
And I'm going, God, man.
Amazing to me that this is the first ever matchup
between these two wrestling legends.
They went to a different place.
They kind of went old school.
One to the chest, one to the forehead.
And they kept working, all of a sudden, you could...
You could hear the people start coming with Inoki.
We hear the crowd for one of the few times
at Collision in Korea. Really responding to Inoki.
And about halfway through that match,
that place is going absolutely crazy.
Inoki now coming off the ropes sets up...
Firmly plants his feet and takes the
Nature Boy Ric Flair off his feet.
This is a testament to Ric because Ric's job
was to get Inoki over.
Ric's job was to showcase Inoki.
There's nobody better at that.
Flair in a lot of trouble. Inoki tosses Flair!
And I remember the finish of the match...
♪
Chest kick.
And, Inoki went over...
and the place just came unglued.
♪
These people were entertained for probably
the first time in their lives.
I mean, 'cause there was no happiness in this place, man.
This was like going to hell and living.
They had a little fun that night, you know,
and I guess that forced attendance,
they were glad they were forced there,
you know, for that one anyways.
That was the greatest match that's ever happened
in this business. Ever.
With the largest wrestling event in history
coming to a close, and freedom within reach,
the Americans must stay in line for just a few more hours,
or else this bizarre trip will become a permanent stay.
♪
As the epic event draws to a close,
and with just hours remaining before the group departs,
a final ceremonial dinner is Scorpio's
last chance to settle the score with Hawk.
I hear doors closing, "ch-ch-ch,"
everybody's going down to dinner.
I open my door, I go out,
I walk around the corner, it's me and Hawk.
♪
We're face-to-face now.
We're looking at each other, I'm looking at him,
I'm like, "What do you want to do?
You want to finish this right now?"
He pushes the button for the elevator,
so I turn and I back into the elevator,
keep my eye on him at all times.
I got my shank with me.
He gets into the elevator. He's not saying nothing,
we're just looking at each other.
I'm like, "What do you want to do?
You want to finish this right now?"
And all of a sudden, he says, "I ran out of pills.
I ain't got no steroids, got no smoke,
I got no nothing.
My nerves got to me, I was upset."
I said, "I accept your apology," I said,
"But I'll tell you what, we get back to Tokyo,
if you still want to finish this,
we're gonna finish this."
I said, "Alright, man, whatever you want to do."
We ended up squashing it in North Korea,
got to Japan. I was ready.
And that never happened, man.
But he got an ass whooping and learned that Scorpio
ain't the one to mess with, I'll tell you that shit.
We were in North Korea for four days.
It was a relatively short period of time
that felt like a lifetime.
So, by the time it was the day to leave...
Everybody was on edge.
We were physically tired, we were mentally tired.
And there was a little bit of a tension in the air
because we still didn't have our passports yet.
But, once we physically had our passports in our hand
and we were on the plane and we were headed
back to Japan, everything changed.
It wasn't until the plane landed.
Ric Flair literally walked down the stairs of the plane,
walked down to the tarmac,
got down on the ground and kissed the pavement.
That's how excited Ric Flair was.
♪
$3000 suit on, alligator shoes.
Got down on his hands and knees,
and kissed the ground, says, "I love Japan."
And I mean, he was woo'ing and...
Now he's Ric Flair again.
He was happier than a lark, man.
And we all felt the same way.
The event failed to energize Inoki's political ambitions
as he lost his reelection bid and left politics behind
for almost two decades.
While this fusion of staged combat and
international politics seems like an unlikely pairing,
it revealed a fascinating parallel between wrestling
and North Korea, as they are both masters of
blurring the lines between fantasy and reality.
The show, itself, was super cool.
Meeting Muhammad Ali on top of it,
wrestling in front of that dude.
I mean, I remember after my first match,
he told me, he says, "Oh, you, you're really good.
You're very good." I says, "Thank..."
I mean, this is Muhammad Ali, brother.
So, being a part of that was,
was absolutely... awesome.
And it's 2 Cold Scorpio up and over!
Two nights in a row,
189,000 people.
I've, I've never seen that many people together, ever.
That's the only thing that I can ever brag about to Hogan
that I've done something that he has not done,
is I wrestled for 199,000 people
two nights in a row, not one.
And that's all I got on him. (laughs)
I've been a part of WrestleMania and
I've been to Super Bowls. I've, you know,
I've been to a lot of different big events.
They pale in comparison
to what I saw in Pyongyang.
I knew...
that Vince McMahon was probably...
livid that there was a wrestling event that
drew a bigger house than WrestleMania.
But, my joy is mitigated by the fact that none of them
were paying customers and
they were kind of forced to be there.
But technically, if you go to Wikipedia, folks,
largest wrestling event in the world...
you know, I did that.
♪