Greatest Practitioners: The Original Sheik, The Iron Sheik. Also used by: Gory Guerrero, Sgt. Slaughter (as a heel), Sabu, Rusev A nasty variation of the rear chinlock, the camel clutch involves stretching the opponents back and wrenching their head backwards at the same time. Technically, the difference between a rear chinlock and a camel clutch is the placement of the opponents arms over your thighs, but the two names are often used interchangeably. Gory Guerrero (patriarch of the legendary Guerrero wrestling family) innovated the hold as a chinlock variation in Mexico. The hold was then adopted by Ed Farhat alias The Shiek - who re-named it to fit his Middle Eastern gimmick. From there, it got over as one of the most feared submission holds in the history of pro wrestling. Heel wrestlers generally usually use it more than babyfaces do, as it is incredibly painful to look at and thus represents a great way for a babyface to illicit sympathy from a crowd. It also works exceedingly well as a photo/video opportunity. Because The Sheik used the hold so well throughout his career and because he was so feared in his prime, the hold was over enough for The Iron Sheik to use it to end the five-year reign of WWF Champion Bob Backlund. In this famous incident, Backlunds friend and manager Arnold Skaaland reluctantly threw in the towel after seeing that Backlund would never escape the deadly hold.
I am a professional author and lifelong comic books/pro wrestling fan. I also work as a journalist as well as writing comic books (I also draw), screenplays, stage plays, songs and prose fiction.
I don't generally read or reply to comments here on What Culture (too many trolls!), but if you follow my Twitter (@heyquicksilver), I'll talk to you all day long!
If you are interested in reading more of my stuff, you can find it on http://quicksilverstories.weebly.com/ (my personal site, which has other wrestling/comics/pop culture stuff on it).
I also write for FLiCK http://www.flickonline.co.uk/flicktion, which is the best place to read my fiction work.
Oh yeah - I'm about to become a Dad for the first time, so if my stuff seems more sentimental than usual - blame it on that!
Finally, I sincerely appreciate every single read I get. So if you're reading this, thank you, you've made me feel like Shakespeare for a day! (see what I mean?)
Latcho Drom,
- CQ
