To the patrons of our cafe of mid-day 80’s escapism,
One of the quintessential 1980’s bad guys has left us.
Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri, better known as a professional wrestler, “The Iron Sheik” (herein referred to as “Sheik”), passed away this morning.
From humble beginnings (Sheik often said he never saw water running out of a tap until his 20s), he turned a stint in the military into a job serving as a bodyguard for the Shah of Iran.
With a lifelong love of amateur wrestling, he almost made the 1968 Iranian Olympic Team.
He continued to win amateur championships and eventually became an assistant coach for the 1972 US Olympic Wrestling team, a squad earning a silver medal in the Munich games.
Also in 1972, Sheik was invited to train as a professional wrestler by Verne Gange, an alternate on the 1948 Olympic Wrestling team who had become a successful pro star based out of Minneapolis.
(Interestingly, one of Sheik’s classmates in that dojo was Richard Fleiher, a young college dropout who would eventually be known as “Nature Boy” Ric Flair.)
Completing his training and seasoning himself with experience across various territories throughout the ’70s and ’80s, Sheik would eventually win the WWF Championship in late 1983.
His heelish persona, adorned with curl-toed boats, handlebar mustache, Persian Clubs, and the Iranian flag, made him the perfect villain for the Cold War early eighties.
Sheik would eventually lose the title to Hulk Hogan on January 21, 1984, in front of a sold-out Madison Square Garden in New York City, a moment generally accepted as the dawn of “Hulkamania” and the imminent rise of WWF (now WWE) as the leading sports-entertainment company in the world.
His in-ring career would last until 1991, but Sheik would make sporadic appearances for multiple wrestling leagues for the rest of his life.
The relevance of the Iron Sheik for almost the last twenty years came from his presence on social media.
His obscenity-filled tirades regarding issues of the day, or his rival, Hulk Hogan, became viral sensations.
Perfectly comfortable in the character of “Sheik,” and using all great professional wrestlers’ timing and promo skills, he began a second career as a go-to guest on talk shows or a heavy hitter on celebrity roasts.
Despite his crazy persona in and out of the ring, Sheik was a family man, married to his wife for 47 years. (The best man at his wedding was legendary WWE Stickman “Mean” Gene Okerlund.)
The years of slams, steel chairs, and suplexes had caught up to him in recent years, and today at the age of 81, “Sheiky Baby,” as his wrestling cohorts called him in the locker room, finally took that three-count.
The Iron Sheik has a rightful place in 80s culture.
Without him, so much of the sports entertainment world we know today would be vastly different and much less colorful.
jb
Photo courtesy of WWE.
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