13 Things We Learned From Dark Side Of The Ring: The Original Sheik

There's a decent chunk of time devoted to how well The Sheik was doing as promoter for Big Time, but things went south in a hurry once his love of gambling started to catch up with him. Suddenly, money wasn't as abundant, and a lot of wrestlers had started grumbling about poor payoffs or dwindling live gates. Then, Farhat committed one of wrestling's ultimate sins.

He messed Bruno Sammartino around. A big no no.

Sheik brought Bruno in for a bumper bout at Cobo Hall in Detroit. Later that night, Sammartino went for dinner with wrestling manager Dave Burzynski and told him he wouldn’t be coming back for a return match 2 weeks later. Burzynski was shocked, and asked what had happened. According to Bruno, Sheik had promised him $2,000 for the first match, but only handed him $800 without really explaining why.

Perhaps talking to Sammartino ahead of time and trying to cut a deal fairer to the ailing promotion would've been clever. Failing that, going for a cheaper option might've saved some hassle. It was one seriously risky move to shortchange Bruno and stiff him out of a promised payoff. That didn't sit well with one of the greats, and he vowed never to return under Sheik's watch.

It isn't cool to effectively swindle anyone on the card, but...this was Bruno Sammartino. He was one of the most respected and powerful stars in the industry, and he wouldn't have been quiet about Sheik's antics to others. VICE moved on from this fairly quickly, but it was a sorry chapter in Farhat's story and proved tantamount to promotional suicide.