Before he was the Iron Sheik, Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri was an amateur wrestler in Iran as well as a bodyguard for the last shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, per ABC News. Vaziri moved to the U.S., won an Amateur Athletic Union Greco-Roman wrestling championship, and then went on to be an assistant coach for the U.S. Olympic wrestling team that participated in the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany.
He began his professional wrestling career that same year and joined the World Wrestling Federation in 1979 with his trademark look of a shaved head, handlebar mustache, and shoes that curled at the end. He had his heyday in the 1980s when he played foil to Hulk Hogan and later Sgt. Slaughter, per KION. He was retired from wrestling but was still active on social media when the IOC became the target of his ire in 2013. "I live my life in the mat, and it break my heart for next generation for them not to be learning the art of the freestyle wrestling," he told Bleacher Report. The Iron Sheik died on Wednesday, June 7, 2023, at age 81.
