The Iron Sheik is dead

     Arnold Buckley

.   One of Darkest Days of America that is right up there on 911 was December 15th 1983 when the Iron Sheik defeated Bob Backland for the WWF world championship wrestling. The United States was in the height of a cold war with Iran and the fact that Iranian wrestler could come and beat a 5-year reigning champion in a matter of seconds was perhaps the biggest blow and to our morale  in this nation sporting history. Thankfully the Iron Sheik was a failed World Wrestling Federation Champion as within the next month the Incredible Hulk Hogan destroyed him in a match setting up Hulkamania and massive increase in popularity in wrestling in the coming

years .The Iron Sheik would never become champion again and he would wrestle for a while in the World Wrestling ended Federation as part of a tag team. The Iron Sheik was one of the more despicable evil wrestlers of all time as he had appointed boots and he withdraw his opponent wrestling and kick them with his boots right in the eye the Iron Sheik died the other day and he was 88 years old and I believe he made several appearances even on the Morton Downey Jr show as a wrestling expert the Iron Sheik was from Tehren,  Iran and a strong

supporter of the Ayatollah and why and how was he allowed to wrestle while we were near World War 3 with Iran I still do not understand nor can ever comprehend.  The Iron Sheik survived and lived on with a WWF pension for years often going online and making social commentary with his stupid political and wrestling commentary and this will not be missed even by the most die hard Iranian nationalist or Iron Sheik fan.

The Iran Sheik actually wrestled for years before his coming to the World Wrestling Federation and winning the championship in 1983 and after his humiliation in January 1984 he just was never the same and probably retired a decade later in the early 90s. The Iron Sheik is deader than a doorknob and deader than his boots and thankfully we were spared many posts mid-90s appearances of the Iron Sheik in the wrestling Wars of that decade. The World Wrestling Federation could easily made him some Batman villain type of wrestling manager but they decided to spare us any more of the Iron Sheik than we needed to see. The Iron Sheik is dead at the age of 84