R.I.P The Iron Sheik

The greatest villain of my childhood was The Iron Sheik. He was fearsome with his massive physique, his barrel chest, and those boots with the little curls on the front. Commentator Gorilla Monsoon made a point of saying the points on the end of Sheik's boots made his kicks hurt even more because the were sharp and pointy. They should have been against the rules but that never seemed to come up as he put the boots to our heroes alongside his equally evil foreign partner, Nikolai Volkoff.

I had nightmares about The Iron Sheik. The way he yelled and screamed in his promos, that distinctive and memorable accent. I fell for all the gaga of The Iron Sheik, every last bit of his kayfabe villainy hooked me and I believed everything he did and said. It's the greatest compliment a fan can give a wrestler when you genuinely fear that they might actually hurt you if you met them. At least, that was the case when Sheik was coming up in the era before wrestling became Sports Entertainment.

I have three distinct memories of The Iron Sheik from my childhood. The first happened when Hulk Hogan challenged and defeated The Iron Sheik to become the WWF World Heavyweight Champion. The Rock N'Wrestling connection had taken over my favorite TV channel, MTV, thanks to its association with Cyndi Lauper and it led to me seeing the man who would come to dominate a large portion of my early childhood fandom, the larger than life, Hulk Hogan.

I'd seen The Iron Sheik before, as I said, he haunted my nightmares. My brother watched wrestling and would try out holds on me. One of his favorites was the so-called 'Camel Clutch,' the finishing maneuver of The Iron Sheik. It involves getting the opponent on their stomach, pulling their shoulders up to rest on your kneeds and then grabbing their chin and sitting down on the opponents' back. It hurts, it really hurts when it is done poorly, as a child does it to another child. And, it looked a lot like it hurt the men on television when Sheik applied the hold.

Sheik famously ended the World Title reign of Bob Backlund with the Camel Clutch after Backlund's manager, Arnold Skoland threw in the towel, fearing that his friend and client would never give up and would end up with a broken back. The sounds of Backlund's agony and that of other Sheik opponents became part of the lore of the match with Hulk Hogan. Could The Hulkster be the man to survive or avoid the deathly clutches of The Camel Clutch. I was riveted by this particular drama. I was worried that my new hero could be paralyzed by this horrible villain and his painful finishing move.

I need not have worried, The Hulkster dispatched of The Iron Sheik in mere minutes as the crowd on MTV exploded into applause and myself and my brother screamed and yelled in our living room while Cyndi Lauper hopped into the ring to celebrate with the Hulkster. Backstage, all of the good guys were there, clapping Hogan on the back, including the massive and beloved, Andre the Giant. It was joyous for a young wrestling fan. I can also recall going to the bad guy locker room where an angry and vitriolic Iron Sheik vowed revenge while his fellow baddies mean mugged behind him.

After that, having fallen fully and completely in love with professional wrestling, I bought my first wrestling figures. These giant rubber dolls of Hulk Hogan and The Iron Sheik became my constant companions. I banged them together in match after match until the paint chipped off and I still kept playing. I amassed a massive collection that is probably in a landfill somewhere today. Sheik was always my top villain.

I recall one more Sheik memory from my early childhood. Having been defeated by Hulk Hogan, he formed a tag team with Nikolai Volkoff and challenged two of my heroes, white meat, babyfaced, good guys, The U.S Express, Barry Windham and Mike Rotunda. They were handsome and they were cool. They came to the ring to the sound of Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A in the era before copyrights entered the world of Professional Wrestling. I loved the U.S Express almost as much as Hulk Hogan. They were the absolute perfect foils for foreign baddies like The Iron Sheik and the sinister, beefy, Russian Nikolai Volkoff.

Volkoff had a gimmick where he insisted on singing the Russian National Anthem before his matches and their were few more giddy thrills for me as a wrestling fan than when a good guys music would hit while Volkoff was singing and he and Sheik would be outraged in the ring. Here's this Russian bad guy singing the Russian National Anthem and suddenly Born in the U.S.A rings through the arena, it was so much fun. Then, the U.S Express lost the tag team titles to Sheik and Volkoff and I was devastated. Windham and Rotunda were leaving the WWF and being a child, well before the internet, I had no idea they were going away.

It's strange today to think of the emotional rollercoaster of my young life connected to this strange man, The Iron Sheik. I had formative experiences because of this man. I learned about good and evil, bad and good, rules and rule breakers, all because of The Iron Sheik and the WWF. Hulk Hogan, perhaps, had a bigger role to play there, but they were two sides of the same coin for a lot of my childhood. I had no idea what xenophobia was, I was a small child. All I knew was this man with an angry accent cheated and wanted to hurt my heroes.

The innocent simplicity of that idea makes me smile. The idea that I was ever that beautifully naive fills me with a twinge of poignant sadness. It also leads me to one final, deeply confusing memory of my childhood and The Iron Sheik. When I was 15 years old, I had drifted toward baseball, music and girls as my main occupations. Wrestling was still in my life but to a greatly lesser degree. I had heard that the legendary Sgt. Slaughter had turned his back on America and was now on TV praising Saddam Hussein.

This was during The Gulf War, a war that was on TV every night and appeared to my teenage self to have a massive, fearsome importance. Here was an exemplar of American military pride now suddenly turning heel and taking his evil into the real world of war and politics while still on this ludicrous television show filled with heroes and villains. I tuned into see what was going on with this and I was struck by something. To complete the villainous turn of Sgt. Slaughter, he was paired with a pair of men who were said to be Iraqi war heroes. One of these men was, The Iron Sheik.

But, he wasn't the Iron Sheik anymore. Where he had always claimed to be from Iran, he now claimed to be from Iraq. And, he had a new name, Col. Mustafa. I was baffled. I hadn't seen Sheik in a few years since he had haunted my childhood memories. I still had his rubber action figure somewhere in my bedroom and I clearly recognized who he was. And yet, it was never commented upon. He was just this new character now. It's the first time that the farce of professional wrestling became clear to me. I had already become aware of the scripted nature of pro wrestling, thanks to my brother who enjoyed ruining things for me, but this was a strange and formative revelation about the fakery and strangeness of pro wrestling.

Thank you Iron Sheik for having been a surprisingly important figure in my life, my fandom and for all that you did after wrestling to destroy the myths of lesser men such as Hulk Hogan. Sheik was a cantankerous figure in old age, outside of pro wrestling. He became a social media star for several years, a man always good for a strange but memorable quote. Most often it would be a vitriolic takedown of Hogan, a man he always knew did not actually live up to the larger than life hero he portrayed on TV.