Wrestling legend explores Twitter triumph and tragedy
The Iron Sheik the keffiyeh-wearing wretch of the wrestling ring is busy making up for years out of the spotlight.
With massive growing popularity on social media through often-incoherent (but always outrageous) rants on Twitter (find him @the_ironsheik) the septuagenarian has amassed almost half a million avid followers by stating he’s still the champion. And if you disagree he will (in his words) “break your fucking neck.”
“About my Twitter I know what you want to ask me” shouts The Iron Sheik in broken English during a recent sit-down interview. “A lot of people give me hard time. A lot of people don’t like me; block me because I talk from heart in my Twitter and I let the people know who is good who is bad. Some of them like it. Some of them don’t like it. They can like it or they [can] fuck off.”
People shouldn’t be shocked by the man’s furious candour. After all The Iron Sheik (whose real name is Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri) was at one point “the most hated man in America.” A heel in the World Wrestling Federation (now the WWE) during the ’80s the Sheik rose to prominence during the Iranian Hostage Crisis by screaming anti-American neologisms whilst tackling some of the ring’s most famous patriots.
“In my young days none of them can handle me. In my young days nothing can touch me” says the Sheik before clutching a gold medal and the championship belt he still delusively carries with him. “You see [this] right? So even I’m 72 years old now I’m happy. I love wrestling since 14 years old!”
In reality Sheik’s reign as champ was short-lived. Designed only to bridge the brief gap between six-year champion Bob Backlund and the WWF’s promised son Hulk Hogan his crescendo would also mark the beginning of his slow decline — injury addiction and the tragic murder of his daughter an event that would turn him to crack cocaine.
Many years passed without so much as an elusive “camel clutch.” It was during those dark days that Toronto twins Jian and Page Magen discovered the wrestler and decided to document his stunning trajectory in The Sheik (now available online after premièring to acclaim at Toronto’s recent Hot Docs festival).
“Unfortunately at the time he had a pretty serious drug habit which completely derailed us from making the movie” admits co-producer Jian. “We sat with 30 hours of footage of which 29 was him in the ghetto doing crack. We couldn’t put that out there about our childhood hero so we tried and kept trying and somewhere in the middle Twitter came along.”
The brothers convinced The Iron Sheik to join Twitter in order to resuscitate his profile even as he struggled through to eventual sobriety. They were shocked to discover that the public was drawn to his bizarre online ranting — which often ranges from questionable social critiques of the corporate class (“Ronald McDonald does your wife have McNugget tits?”) to simple casual observations about fame (“Justin Bieber = Cous Cous Balls”).
“We started recognizing fast that the Sheik had this untapped value that needed to be reached out to as many people as possible” says Jian. “He’s won social media awards Twitter awards and it’s probably one of the main components that’s brought him to this resurrection of where he is now.”
While it may seem like a passing byproduct of the Internet the film actually reveals a more complicated and admirable life. After all behind every unfiltered insolent tweet is a man who escaped the Shah’s secret police in Iran became an Olympic champion coach and raised a loving family.
It just shows that there’s always another side to the story. And if you don’t believe that The Iron Sheik will break your fucking neck.
