The unwinding system of printing press is the most important section for system's tension creating, which shows characteristics of typical multiinputmultioutput, nonlinear and strong coupling. To maintain the stability of the tension in unwinding system has become a key problem to ensure the quality of print. An inverse system theory is used on study in the unwinding system's decoupling and linearization of tension control. According to the characteristics of unwinding system, a series of control variable transformations were employed to implement decoupling and linearization of the unwinding tension system by changing the unwinding syste from a coupled and nonlinear system to two 2nd order pseudo-linear subsystems. The active-damping was introduced into the pseudo-linear subsystems to enhance the ability of disturbance-resist, and high-performance tension control could be obtained by designing additional proportion integration differential (PID) controller. Simulation results show that the proposed control strategy of inverse system can achieve decoupling function among variables of unwinding tension system, and implement decoupling control. The PID controller which is designed after introducing the active-damping makes the tension control get an ideal effect.