The Sheik
with The Iron Sheik. Yeah, that guy! He's still out there doing Iron Sheik stuff.
Documentary of the life and outsized times of Hossein Khosrow Vaziri, better know to old time pro wrestling aficionados as the Iron Sheik, the greatest heel in pro wrestling history.
In the early 80's, pro wrestling made the big time. Vince McMahon took the WWF global, largely on the strength of Hulkamania. But what would the hero Hulk Hogan be without an equally compelling villain to triumph over? That villain was the Iron Sheik. Iranian, bald, badass, foul-mouthed and foul-tempered, he made an entire nation hate his guts...helped along by the Iranian hostage crisis and Vaziri's willingness to play along. But he came with a story of his own; one the crowds couldn't have guessed at. He went from being a champion Greco-Roman wrestler in Iran and one of the Shah's personal bodyguards to coaching the US Olympic team in the 70's and bursting onto the pro scene later on, with all the attendant problems so sadly common in pro wrestling circles.
As a kid, I was fully caught up in this particular wrestling era. I remember hating the Iron Sheik so, so much. But so many years later I was happy to see he was still around and still doing his thing. Time has not been kind to many of the wrestlers I remember from those young, excited times, and a lot of them have had very unhappy endings. Sheik himself has not been without his trials and problems, but he persists in Sheiking on. The film itself kind of plods along, and this is coming from someone with a natural affection for the subject matter and time. So if you have no idea who this guy is or don't care about the history of pro wrestling you'd probably want to give this a miss. I enjoyed it more for nostalgia than anything else. And also it put me on to the Iron Sheik's twitter account, which is f***ing hilarious. Watch footage of his old matches from the 70's if you want to feel really, really out of shape.
On Prime.