Hulk Hogan vs. The Iron Sheik (Dec 1983 – Jan 1984)

Background

By late 1983, Bob Backlund had held the WWF Championship for nearly six years, one of the longest reigns in company history, but Vince McMahon Jr. was rebuilding the promotion around a very different kind of star.[1] McMahon wanted the title on Hulk Hogan, and the plan he preferred was for Backlund to turn heel and drop the belt to him directly. Backlund refused to turn, so the office needed someone else to carry the title for a few weeks in between.[2]

Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri, wrestling as the Iron Sheik, was the transitional champion the WWF picked. Born in Damghan, Iran, on March 15, 1942, Vaziri had trained as a competitive amateur wrestler, served in the Imperial Iranian Army, and worked for a time as a bodyguard to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his family.[3] He emigrated to the United States in the late 1960s, assistant-coached the U.S. Olympic wrestling team in the early 1970s, and broke into professional wrestling training under Verne Gagne and Billy Robinson.[3]

Vaziri had wrestled in the WWF before, debuting in 1979 as the Great Hossein Arab and later returning as the Iron Sheik under manager "Classy" Freddie Blassie.[4] With the Iran hostage crisis of 1979 to 1981 still fresh in the culture, the WWF built him as a flag-waving anti-American villain, and by his own later account the timing was deliberate: "It was the right time to establish my character, my gimmick."[5]

Hulk Hogan, born Terry Gene Bollea on August 11, 1953, in Augusta, Georgia, had left the WWF in 1981 after taking the role of Thunderlips in Rocky III against Vince McMahon Sr.'s wishes, and spent 1982 and 1983 as the AWA's top babyface under Verne Gagne.[6] Gagne agreed to put his AWA title on Hogan at Super Sunday in April 1983, but only if Hogan handed over the majority of his New Japan merchandise and booking money; Hogan offered a 50/50 split instead, and Gagne kept the belt.[6] Hogan left the AWA that November, reportedly by telegram, after Vince McMahon Jr. met him secretly in Minneapolis, and returned to the WWF at a St. Louis television taping on December 27, 1983, beating Bill Dixon.[6]

Build-up

The Iron Sheik came back into the WWF picture in the fall of 1983, working house shows and TV tapings under Blassie's management, waving the Iranian flag and needling crowds with slogans that boiled down to "Iran number one" before he'd even spit on America.[5] The gimmick worked exactly as designed: audiences booed him out of every building he wrestled in.[7]

McMahon built the Sheik into a credible number-one contender through the fall using a formula the office had leaned on before: in 1971, Ivan Koloff had upset Bruno Sammartino for the title as a Soviet-menace transitional champion before dropping it to Pedro Morales three weeks later, and the Sheik's run against Backlund followed the same shape with Iran standing in for Cold War Russia.[21] The angle that put him over Backlund carried a worked injury layered on top of the storyline: the Sheik attacked Backlund with his Persian clubs before the title match, an assault sold on television as having hurt the champion's neck and arm heading into the bout.[2][21]

At Madison Square Garden on December 26, 1983, the Iron Sheik beat Backlund for the WWF Championship. Backlund never tapped or was pinned; trapped in the camel clutch, his manager Arnold Skaaland threw in the towel to save him, a finish that surprised the Garden crowd and ended Backlund's reign at just under six years.[1][2] The Sheik was now WWF Champion, and the whole promotion knew it was for a matter of weeks.

Hogan's return the next day was framed as unconnected to the title picture at first, a homecoming win over enhancement talent Bill Dixon at the St. Louis tapings.[6] Behind the scenes it was anything but incidental: McMahon had wanted Hogan back for months and had the Sheik already installed as the man to lose to him.

For four weeks the Sheik carried the belt through the northeastern house-show circuit, defending it more than twenty times against opponents like Chief Jay Strongbow, Salvatore Bellomo, and Pat Patterson, almost always by pinfall or disqualification so the title stayed put.[22] Backlund himself got rematches during the reign, beating the Sheik by disqualification in Boston on January 14 and again in Monongahela, Pennsylvania on January 19, results that kept him relevant without ever threatening to put the belt back on him.[22] On January 21, two days before Madison Square Garden, the Sheik wrestled Tito Santana to a double disqualification on a live PRISM broadcast from the Philadelphia Spectrum, a live television appearance that kept the champion in front of a national cable audience heading into the change.[21]

By the Iron Sheik's telling decades later, that installation nearly didn't hold. He said Verne Gagne, still bitter over Hogan's abrupt AWA exit, called him the night before the Madison Square Garden title match and offered him $100,000 to break Hogan's leg during the bout and bring the WWF title back to Minnesota rather than drop it clean: "Don't drop the belt to Hogan. Come back to Minnesota. I [will] take care of you."[8][9] Hogan has repeated a version of the same story on multiple podcasts, saying, "Little did I know, Verne went out and said he'd give Sheik $100,000 if he broke my leg."[10]

The Sheik said he turned the offer down and told Vince McMahon Sr. and Jr. about the call before the match, recounting his account of it: "my conversation with Mr. Gagne. 'He told me don't lose the belt. Break his leg [and] take the belt to Minnesota.'"[9] He framed his loyalty as a business decision more than anything sentimental, saying of the McMahons, "I didn't mind because I have a lot of respect for Mr. McMahon and his family," calling Vince Sr. "the number one promoter in the world."[11] Greg Gagne, Verne's son, has disputed that his father ever made the offer, so the story rests on the Sheik's and Hogan's accounts against the Gagne family's denial.[10]

The Matches

Hulk Hogan challenged the Iron Sheik for the WWF Championship at Madison Square Garden on January 23, 1984, before an overflow sellout, reported at roughly 22,000 in the arena with several thousand more watching on a screen in the adjoining Felt Forum.[7][12] It was Hogan's first title match back in the company he'd left two years earlier.

Hogan walked out to Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger," entrance music at a time when few WWF wrestlers used any, and the Garden crowd was already loud before the bell rang for the six-foot-eight, roughly 300-pound challenger.[21] The Iron Sheik came out with "Ayatollah" Freddie Blassie in his corner, champion for less than a month and still working the crowd with the same anti-American routine that had made him a target all winter.[21]

The match ran 5:40. The Sheik worked a heel shine, grounding Hogan with a Boston crab that Hogan powered out of, and picked up a near fall off a gutwrench suplex.[12] He went to his finisher, the camel clutch, late in the bout, and Hogan sold it hard before fighting to his feet with the Sheik still riding his back.

Hogan drove the Sheik spine-first into the turnbuckle to break the hold, an escape the broadcast and subsequent retellings treated as the first time anyone had gotten out of the camel clutch clean.[7][13] He followed with his legdrop and pinned the champion for the count of three, and the Garden crowd exploded.[12][13]

On commentary, Gorilla Monsoon called the moment as the changing of an era, declaring "Hulkamania is here!" as Hogan celebrated with the title belt over the ropes.[21] The title change closed the Sheik's reign at 28 days and opened a Hogan reign that would run 1,474 days, into February 1988.[1][13] Commentary and the arena both treated the moment as bigger than a normal title change; it was sold as the debut of a new kind of WWF babyface, built for the arenas and, soon, for television far outside the northeastern loop the promotion had run for decades.

Aftermath

The Iron Sheik dropped out of the main event picture immediately. He worked a run of program appearances against Hogan on the house-show loop through early 1984 without ever getting the title back, then settled into a heel tag team with Nikolai Volkoff under Blassie, playing on Cold War as much as hostage-crisis anxieties with a Soviet-Iranian villain pairing.[4] That team won the WWF Tag Team Championship from Barry Windham and Mike Rotunda at the first WrestleMania on March 31, 1985.[4] In the years after, the Sheik kept working as a top-tier foreign heel, feeding fresh babyfaces like Sgt. Slaughter and "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan the same way he had fed Hogan, and turning up in mainstream tie-ins like Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" music video and Hogan's Saturday-morning cartoon Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling.[21]

Bob Backlund, meanwhile, all but disappeared from WWF television after losing the belt. Dave Meltzer wrote at the time that "the status of Bob Backlund is a mystery, as he has disappeared from the promotion," and speculated he might be done with the business entirely.[14] He did keep wrestling sporadically, including further house-show matches against the Sheik and a run against Don Muraco for the Intercontinental Championship, before leaving the company for several years.[23] Backlund stayed bitter about the finish long after: when he returned to the WWF as a shoot-style heel in 1994, he produced a white towel he claimed was the one Skaaland had thrown in a decade earlier, blamed Skaaland by name for costing him the title, and put his old manager in his own crossface chickenwing hold on television.[23]

Hogan's reign became the spine of the company's national expansion through 1984 and beyond, feeding directly into the Piper's Pit coconut angle with Jimmy Snuka, the Hogan vs. Piper program, and the first WrestleMania main event.[15] The Sheik crossed paths with Hogan again in the win column only rarely; the two never had the rematch that fans of the bribe story sometimes assume followed.

Behind the Scenes

The single most retold piece of this program happened off camera and, on the record, only from the two men most affected by it. In a 2015 appearance on Talk Is Jericho, the Iron Sheik said Verne Gagne phoned him the night before the Hogan match and offered him $100,000 to injure Hogan's leg badly enough to take the title out of the WWF entirely.[8][9] Hogan has backed the story up on his own podcast appearances, framing Gagne's motive as payback for Hogan walking out on the AWA that November.[10]

Neither man's account can be independently verified against a neutral source. Greg Gagne has pushed back on the story publicly, and Verne Gagne never confirmed it before his death in 2015.[10] What both the Sheik and Hogan agree on is that the match happened as booked, and the Sheik has said he told Vince McMahon Sr. and Jr. about the call before he ever got in the ring, describing the moment as one where the McMahons thanked him for his loyalty.[9][11] Bruce Prichard has retold the story on his own podcast as WWF office lore, treating it as accepted backstage legend even without outside corroboration.

Looking back on the loss itself, the Sheik framed it less as a wrestling defeat than as bad luck running into a bigger draw. "I lost on one bad day, lost my belt to Hulk Hogan," he said, crediting Hogan's win to size and timing rather than in-ring skill, and setting his own Olympic-style amateur background and three AAU championships against what he called Hogan's "luck."[18] He also argued the two men's fortunes were permanently linked regardless of who'd been on the losing end: "Without Iron Sheik, no Hulkamania."[18]

Contemporaneous coverage was less interested in the leg-breaking rumor, which didn't surface publicly until decades later, and more interested in the business logic of the title switch. Dave Meltzer's Wrestling Observer Newsletter reported the Hogan-Sheik match did an overflow sellout of roughly 26,000 across the Garden and Felt Forum, and that "Hulk'A'Mania" was "sweeping the East Coast in a big way."[14] Meltzer was skeptical of the booking choice that got them there, writing that "it's obvious in hindsight that Don Muraco should have been the transition to Hogan instead of Sheik, because that flag-waving stuff just doesn't work anymore," and separately criticizing how fast McMahon moved the belt off the Sheik as evidence he intended to keep "rubber stamping" a straight run to the top for Hogan.[14]

The gimmick underneath all of it, an Iranian villain built explicitly to cash in on hostage-crisis-era anger, is the part that reads hardest now. The Sheik acknowledged decades later that he and the promotion had targeted the exact moment: "It was the right time to establish my character, my gimmick."[5] Writers revisiting the character have since described him as absorbing an entire decade's foreign-policy resentment into a single wrestling heel, using crude signifiers, curled boots, a shaved head, mangled English slogans, to make an audience hate a man standing for a country most of them had never thought much about before 1979.[16]

Off screen, the Sheik and Hogan's relationship stayed complicated for the rest of the Sheik's life. He built a second career in the 2010s on a profanity-heavy Twitter account that regularly ripped into Hogan by name, and the running kayfabe insults made some fans assume real animosity.[17] But in a 2014 WWE.com interview, asked about seeing Hogan at a wrestling convention, the Sheik said plainly, "I get along with him."[18] The Iron Sheik's own life carried far heavier weight than the Twitter act let on: his daughter Marissa was murdered by her boyfriend in 2003, a loss that deepened a cocaine addiction he said he didn't get clean from until 2013.[3] He and Jim Duggan, kayfabe rivals who were actually road partners, were arrested together on the Garden State Parkway in May 1987 when a trooper found marijuana on Duggan and cocaine on the Sheik, an incident that broke kayfabe publicly and led to both men's WWF releases.[19]

Legacy

The Hogan-Sheik title change is remembered as the formal starting point of Hulkamania and, by extension, the WWF's national expansion of the mid-1980s. Hogan's reign that began that night ran 1,474 days and carried the company through the first WrestleMania and its first wave of mainstream crossover.[1][13]

At the time, the match itself drew big and drew fast: an overflow Garden crowd reported around 26,000 and a wave of regional press coverage the promotion hadn't seen at that scale before.[14][12] Meltzer's contemporaneous skepticism about the Sheik as transitional champion didn't slow the business down; if anything, the speed of the title switch became a template McMahon reused throughout the decade, the same short-reign-foreign-heel structure he'd already used once with Ivan Koloff in 1971.[21] Within months, the WWF had signed a licensing deal with toy maker LJN, and the first wave of action figures released in the spring of 1984 put Hogan, wearing the belt he'd just won, alongside the Iron Sheik and seven other wrestlers on toy store shelves nationwide.[24]

The Iron Sheik's own legacy split into two distinct chapters. For years after 1984 he was remembered mainly as the man Hogan beat, a footnote to somebody else's origin story. That changed in the 2010s, when a viral, profanity-laced Twitter persona (managed with his family's help) turned him into a genuine internet folk hero, and a 2014 documentary, The Sheik, retold his career and personal struggles to a new audience.[17][3] He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005.[3]

The Iron Sheik died at his home in Fayetteville, Georgia, on June 7, 2023, at age 81.[3] Hogan's tribute the next day leaned on the bond the two shared rather than the character work that had once pitted them against each other: "The wrestling world has lost a true legend, and Sheikh's contributions to our industry will never be forgotten. I'll always cherish the battles we had in the ring. Our matches were intense, and our rivalry was legendary. We shared a bond that only fellow wrestlers can understand."[20]

See Also

Sources & Further Listening

1. Hulk Hogan — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulk_Hogan
2. "On this date in WWF history: Iron Sheik bridges the gap between Bob Backlund and Hulk Hogan" — Cageside Seats. https://www.cagesideseats.com/2011/12/26/2661140/wwf-iron-sheik-bob-backlund-hulk-hogan-champion-camel-clutch
3. The Iron Sheik — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Sheik
4. The Iron Sheik (Pro Wrestling Fandom profile). https://prowrestling.fandom.com/wiki/Iron_Sheik
5. "The Iron Sheik, villainous pro wrestler from Iran, dies at 81" — The Hollywood Reporter. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/iron-sheik-dead-villainous-pro-wrestler-iran-1235509205/
6. "What Were They Thinking #13? The AWA doesn't build around Hulk Hogan" — That 401k Site. http://that401ksite.com/2017/04/05/what-were-they-thinking-13-the-awa-doesnt-build-around-hulk-hogan/
7. "Hulk Hogan beats Iron Sheik to win first WWF title" — HISTORY. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/january-23/hulk-hogan-beats-iron-sheik-to-win-first-wwf-title
8. "Iron Sheik Says Verne Gagne Asked Him to Break Hulk Hogan's Leg and Leave WWE With the World Title" — 411MANIA. https://411mania.com/wrestling/iron-sheik-says-verne-gagne-asked-him-to-break-hulk-hogans-leg-and-leave-wwe-with-the-world-title/
9. "The Iron Sheik Talks Dropping WWE Title To Hulk Hogan, Promoter Asking Him To Break Hogan's Leg" — Wrestling Inc. https://www.wrestlinginc.com/news/2015/11/the-iron-sheik-talks-dropping-wwe-title-to-hulk-hogan-603790/
10. "Hulk Hogan: Verne Gagne Said He Would Pay The Iron Sheik $100,000 To Break My Leg At MSG" — Fightful. https://www.fightful.com/wrestling/hulk-hogan-verne-gagne-said-he-would-pay-iron-sheik-100000-break-my-leg-msg/
11. "The Iron Sheik Talks Dropping WWE Title To Hulk Hogan, Promoter Asking Him To Break Hogan's Leg" — Wrestling Inc. https://www.wrestlinginc.com/news/2015/11/the-iron-sheik-talks-dropping-wwe-title-to-hulk-hogan-603790/
12. "Hulk Hogan vs. the Iron Sheik: The Iranian-Hostage Crisis and the Rise of 'Reagan-Era' Heroism" — Sporting TC. https://www.sportingtc.com/breaking-the-mold/camel-clutch-to-leg-drop-hulk-hogan-the-iron-sheik-and-the-pulse-of-reagans-america
13. "Hulk Hogan vs. The Iron Sheik: WWE Championship Match — January 23, 1984" — WWE.com. https://www.wwe.com/videos/hulk-hogan-vs-the-iron-sheik-wwe-championship-match-january-23-1984
14. Wrestling Observer Newsletter flashback, 1984 — Blog of Doom. https://www.blogofdoom.com/archives/wrestling-observer-flashback-1984/
15. "Rowdy Roddy Piper vs. Superfly Jimmy Snuka" — WrestlingFeuds. https://wrestlingfeuds.com/storylines/snuka-piper-1984
16. "The Enemy of the Babyface Is My Hero" — The Ringer. https://www.theringer.com/wwe/2023/6/8/23753351/the-iron-sheik-wwe-heel-character-history
17. "The Late-Great Iron Sheik's 10 Greatest Tweets" — Pro Wrestling Stories. https://prowrestlingstories.com/pro-wrestling-stories/iron-sheik-twitter/
18. "The other half of Hulkamania: The Iron Sheik discusses January 23, 1984" — WWE.com. https://www.wwe.com/classics/iron-sheik-discusses-hulkamania
19. "Happy Belated 4/20: How The Hacksaw Jim Duggan And Iron Sheik Marijuana Arrest In 1987 Changed Wrestling" — Uproxx. https://uproxx.com/prowrestling/happy-belated-420-how-the-hacksaw-jim-duggan-and-iron-shiek-marijuana-arrest-in-1987-changed-wrestling/
20. "Hulk Hogan Reacts To The Death Of The Iron Sheik" — Wrestling Inc. https://www.wrestlinginc.com/1309388/hulk-hogan-reacts-passing-iron-sheik/
21. "The Iron Sheik-Hulk Hogan Match That Changed Wrestling Forever" — Pro Wrestling Stories. https://prowrestlingstories.com/pro-wrestling-stories/hulk-hogan-iron-sheik/
22. "The Iron Sheik's WWF World Title Defenses" — The Wrestling Insomniac. https://www.thewrestlinginsomniac.com/2021/12/the-iron-sheiks-wwf-world-title-defenses.html
23. Bob Backlund — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Backlund
24. "WWF Wrestling Superstars: The Tale of WWE's First Wrestling Figures" — Pro Wrestling Stories. https://prowrestlingstories.com/pro-wrestling-stories/wwf-wrestling-superstars-wrestling-figures/

Further Listening

• Talk Is Jericho, episode 193: "The Iron Sheik" — the podcast appearance where the Sheik detailed the Verne Gagne bribe story
• The Sheik (2014 documentary) — Vaziri's life story, including the Marissa Vaziri tragedy and his path to sobriety
• The Steve Austin Show — Hulk Hogan's own retelling of the Gagne bribe allegation
• The Wrestling Observer Newsletter, January–February 1984 issues — Dave Meltzer's contemporaneous reporting on the title change and the WWF's national expansion