10 Wrestlers Who Never Let Kayfabe Die

Though the cat’s well and truly out of the bag today, back in the ‘80s it was far less apparent that the Iron Sheik wasn’t actually an America-hating Middle East sympathiser.

Admittedly, the Iron Sheik benefits from the fact that the man who portrayed him—Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri—was actually born in the country from which his character was billed. But even so, the Iranian native went to great efforts to add some more nuanced touches to his life outside the ring to help him live up to the Iron Sheik spiel.

In his Dusty Rhodes’ 2005 autobiography, Dusty: Reflections of an American Dream, Rhodes recalls fondly how the Sheik was “never out of character” and that “all of his credit cards had “A Sheik” on them” as opposed to anything resembling his birth name.

That being said, the illusion surrounding Sheik’s character was broken somewhat in 1987, when he was arrested after being found with cocaine in his possession whilst traveling with Hacksaw Jim Duggan. Duggan’s character was, of course, that of an American patriot, so for Sheik to be sharing a ride with him was a major exposé of his own gimmick.

Whoops.