The Iron Sheikh, a Hall of Famer wrestler who became a rogue star in the 1980s by taking on Hulk Hogan and teaming up with a wrestler claiming to represent the Soviet Union, died in his sleep early Wednesday morning at his home in Fayetteville. Ga. He was either 81 (according to his passport) or 80 (according to his statements).
The death was confirmed by his managers, Page and Jian Magen, who said they did not know the cause.
Foreign-style heels are a time-honored tradition in professional wrestling, and the Iron Sheikh, whose official name was Khosrow Vaziri, became one of the most well-known of them all.
The Sheik loosely drew on his Iranian heritage to create a caricature of a Middle Eastern villain. He wore a thick mustache, boots with ruffled toes and kaffiyeh, oriental headscarves – not normally worn in Iran.
At the height of the Sheikh’s infamy and after the Iran hostage crisis in 1979, he often stomped in the ring and waved an Iranian flag with the face of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader at the time, to align himself with stereotypical American wrestlers.
The sheikh’s signature move was the camel hold, in which he would sit on an opponent’s back, put his fingers under the other wrestler’s chin, and pull him up. His unfortunate opponent’s spine seemed to bend like a drawn bow.
In 1983, the Sheik defeated Bob Backlund to win the World Wrestling Federation Championship. But his time with the title was short.
About a month later, on January 23, 1984, The Sheikh defended his title to a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden against Hulk Hogan, then a relatively new face to the World Wrestling Federation (now known as WWE). .
The match appeared to be going well for the Sheik, and he caught Hogan in a camel hitch. But Hogan got up with the Sheikh on his back and threw him against a cornerstone.
The Sheik dropped onto the mat. Hogan jumped off the ropes, did a leg drop on the Sheik and then pinned him. It was the first of Hogan’s six WWE Championships and the beginning of Hulkamania.
Decades later, the defeat still hurt, said the characterful sheikh in a 2014 interview with WWE.
“Hulk Hogan, the only thing he had was luck,” he said. “I had a bad night, I lost my belt.”
Sergeant. Slaughter was a regular opponent of the Sheik, later losing a key match to him in 1984 at Madison Square Garden.
The next year, the Sheikh teamed up with Nikolai Volkoff, a Heel reportedly wrestling for the Soviet Union (he was actually from Croatia), and went on to win the World Tag Team Championship at the inaugural Wrestlemania.
The Sheikh also reinforced his character’s anti-American rhetoric. He would often grab a speaker’s microphone and shout “Iran #1!” Russia #1!”
He then glared at the audience and yelled “USA!” and spit on the floor.
The crowd’s reaction could be so violent that the sheikh, despite his ferocity in the ring, sometimes feared for his safety.
Keith Elliot Greenberg, a wrestling historian and author, said in a phone interview that he felt fans sometimes over-believed in the Sheikh’s character.
“The reality was that he was actually a very loyal American and was grateful to the United States for the opportunities it gave him,” Greenberg said.
Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri was born in Damghan, a town about 200 miles east of Tehran. His passport had March 15, 1942 as his date of birth, but he wasn’t sure if it was correct and celebrated his birthday on September 9th. His parents, Ghassem and Maryam Vaziri, owned a farm that grew pistachios, grapes and other crops.
When he was a boy, his family moved to Tehran and opened a wrestling gym where some of Iran’s best wrestlers trained. He grew up with the sport.
Vaziri developed into a talented wrestler and his notoriety landed him a job as a bodyguard for the Shah of Iran’s family. But after Olympic gold medalist Gholamreza Takhti died under mysterious circumstances in 1968, perhaps because he displeased the Shah, Vaziri left Iran for the United States and settled in Minneapolis.
He wrestled with an amateur club in Minnesota, won an Amateur Athletic Union Greco-Roman wrestling tournament in 1971, and served as an assistant coach for the US Olympic team in 1972 and 1976 before making the transition to full-time professional wrestling.
Vaziri trained under Verne Gagne, promoter of the American Wrestling Association. The idea for The Iron Sheik came from Mary Gagne, Verne’s wife, Mr Greenberg said, although Vaziri has experimented with other versions of the character over the years.
In 1975 he married Caryl Peterson, who survives him. He also leaves behind their daughters Nicole and Tanya; a sister; and five grandchildren.
In the 1980s, the sheikh began using drugs and drinking heavily. In 1987, he and Hacksaw Jim Duggan – a babyface, as good wrestlers are called – were arrested on the New Jersey Turnpike after cops found cocaine and marijuana in their car.
The Sheikh appeared in a match as Sgt. Slaughter’s ally in 1991 and in 1997 he managed another wrestler, the Sultan. But his professional career mostly came to a halt as his drug use increased in the 1990s. He has long struggled with substance abuse, but according to an article Mr. Greenberg wrote for Bleacher Report in 2013, he’s more recently been able to go without drugs other than the occasional beer.
In 2003, his daughter Marissa, 27, was killed by her boyfriend Charles Reynolds. Vaziri said he was considering attacking Mr Reynolds with a razor blade in court, Mr Greenberg wrote, but his family dissuaded him from doing so. Mr. Reynolds was sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in 2016.
In 2005, the Iron Sheik was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
Beginning in the early 2000s, the Sheik brought a less inhibited version of his character to Howard Stern’s radio show to rant about various wrestlers. He threatened to analize rivals like Hogan and used homophobic slurs to describe the ultimate warrior.
In recent years, the sheikh’s diatribes have surfaced on social media. His managers often posted profanity-laced messages in all caps to a Twitter account that has nearly 650,000 followers. A recent piece of text just said “HOGAN” followed by a swear word.
But the sheikh admitted in 2014 things were more civil when he met Hogan outside the ring.
“Nobody badmouths the past,” he said. “I get along with him.”
Alain Delaquérière contributed to the research.