On 6/26/76, Muhammad Ali met Antonio Inoki in a wrestler vs. boxer match in Tokyo, Japan. Due to the time zone differences, the bout was seen on June 25 at over 150 closed circuit TV locations in the U.S. It was the final match shown on wrestling cards throughout the country. The particular telecast anyone saw depended on where they lived and what their local wrestling territory was. In addition to the Inoki vs. Ali match, most of the other closed circuit locations saw Andre the Giant vs. Chuck Wepner from Shea Stadium.

Wepner was the club fighter who had taken on Ali a year earlier. Known as “The Bayonne Bleeder”, he was knocked out in the 15th round against Ali, after having knocked Ali down. Sylvester Stallone based the Rocky Balboa character on Wepner. While the Ali-Inoki fight was a staged debacle, the Wepner-Andre fight turned out to be the real deal. The fight lasted only three rounds and ended when Andre threw Wepner out of the ring. Andre won the match by count out.

Giant Matman Tosses Wepner Out of Ring

NEW YORK (AP)- Wrestler Andre the Giant stunned boxer Chuck Wepner with a head butt in the third round, tossed him out of the ring and won their wrestling-boxing match Friday night at Shea Stadium when Wepner couldn't get back into the ring within 20 seconds. (video)

The Giant, who doubled Wepner in weight and took the 220-pound boxer's hardest shots without any apparent trouble, spun Wepner 380 degrees in the air and deposited him outside the ring.

With part of the Shea Stadium infield turf on his back, Wepner was aided by one of his seconds in an effort to return to the ring inside the 20-second limit. But he couldn't get there in time, and referee John Stanley ruled that the fight was over at 1:15 of the third round.

Seconds from both corners converged in the ring and began mixing it up, a bizarre windup to this bizarre confrontation which was a preliminary event to the Muhammad Ali-Antonio Inoki martial arts encounter in Tokyo, shown here on a giant, three-sided screen set up in the middle of the ballpark.

The strategy of the match was obvious from the outset. Wepner, the 6-foot-5 brew salesman from Bayonne, N.J., danced and jabbed and reached for the ropes whenever he got into trouble. Andre, a 7-1, 440-pound giant from Grenoble, France, was continually the aggressor, stalking Wepner and attempting to pull him onto the mat.

Each time the Giant grabbed a hold of Wepner, the 35-year old boxer managed to get a leg or an arm on the ropes. That brought the referee in to separate the two combatants.

In the first round, Andre- ever smiling and ever stalking- placed a massive headlock on Wepner, but the boxer scrambled free.

In the second round, the 29-year-old Giant managed to get Wepner onto the canvas with a vicious flip, but Wepner snuck a left foot onto the ropes, allowing him to regain his feet.

The Giant, who is a full-time wrestler, hurt Wepner in the second round with a rabbit punch to the boxer's back. Wepner, whose claim to fame was a 1974 knockout loss to heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, never seriously hurt the Giant, who was awkward- but much, much too bulky for the boxer.

There were 32,097 spectators at the stadium, many of them here for the Ali-lnoki match-up, many of them for the earlier wrestler vs. wrestler confrontations- and many of them crying for blood.

Wepner, nicknamed "The Bayonne Bleeder" because of his proclivity to bleed at crucial times in fights early in his career, was red from the pounding he took but never bloodied Friday night. He was just too small.

But for his trouble, Wepner earned $25.000, as did the mammoth Andre the Giant.

To The Giant Among Us

by Terry Todd

Sports Illustrated, December 21, 1981

"Let's put it this way," he responded recently to a question about the Brobdingnagian Frenchman. "I honestly believe that if Andre took a couple of years away from the game to train like the top lifters do, and if he developed a close personal relationship with his friendly neighborhood pharmacist, the world powerlifting records in both the squat and the deadlift would fall. No question. Think about it. He already weighs almost 500 pounds, with no lifting and no help from steroids. Hell, he'd weigh 600 or 700 pounds and not be any fatter than he is now, and let me tell you, that's not very damn fat. He's a wonder of nature. I've seen him pick up a 250-pound guy like you'd pick up your overcoat. I guess you know what he did to Wepner."

Wepner. Ah, yes. That would be Charles (Chuck) Wepner, cardmate of Muhammad Ali in that ill-advised boxers vs. wrestlers promotion back in 1976: Wepner had the dubious distinction of facing Andre in Shea Stadium in the bout preceding the much ballyhooed, ultimately farcical, Ali vs. Antonio Inoki match broadcast via satellite from Tokyo. Although the clash between Ali and Inoki turned out to be more ludicrous than enlightening, the Andre-Wepner prelim had at least one genuinely exciting moment. Wepner had circled Andre during the first two rounds, tapping him experimentally, as a mountaineer might say, the peak he or she had chosen to climb. Andre had permitted himself to be circled, no doubt postponing for the sake of the crowd the inevitable outcome. (The word inevitable is used advisedly, because over the years boxers have fared poorly whenever they have disregarded the obvious technical advantages of wrestling and engaged in a mixed bout. Most of the boxer-wrestler matchups, in fact, have ended by a pin within a minute, according to ring historians.)

At any rate, in the third round, perhaps emboldened by the lack of response to his tapping, to his tapping, to his gloves so gently rapping, Wepner really clocked the Giant as they broke from the ropes. Whereupon Andre, in a more than usually fell swoop, angrily snatched his smaller opponent into the air and pitched him forthwith over the topmost rope, ending the bout. Quoth the Giant, "Nevermore."

Asked recently about this mismatch, Andre smiled and replied, using the word "boss" as so many men in the game do, "Look, boss, the boxer- wrestler business is almost a joke. After all, a man may hit me a couple of times, but if I cut the ring off and close in, what can he do after I put my hands on him? The boxer has no chance, since he can't even wrestle in a clinch because of his gloves."

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