About

The Iron Sheik is an Iranian-American retired professional wrestler best known for his work in WWE (then WWF) and for his bizarre statements in interviews and on social media such as Twitter.^[1]

Origin

The Sheik’s wrestling career lasted from 1972 – 2010, following his training at the hands of old-time wrestling legends Verne Gagne and Billy Robinson. Wikipedia says of the Sheik’s career^[2]:

Coming off the Iranian hostage crisis, The Iron Sheik, an Iranian citizen who praised his home country and bashed the USA is considered to be one of the greatest heels of all time. His villainous character peaked during the 1980s WWF wrestling boom and his rivalry with Hulk Hogan turned Hogan into one of the greatest television heroes of the decade.

Spread

The Iron Sheik is infamous for his “shoot” (out-of-character) interviews, in which he seems to remain in character nonetheless; these interviews consist primarily of complaining about certain wrestlers having shown him disrespect. Known for his unorthodox lexicon and turns of phrase, a couple of statements from his interviews have become long-running memetic expressions within wrestling fandom (see Related Memes below).

Sheik is highly active on Twitter (link above) and maintains his character online, often retweeting fans’ references to his memetic catchphrases from the interviews as described hereafter. In an article for Heavy.com^[6], journalist Elton Jones writes about how:

One Hall of Fame wrestler with too much free time and way too much to say is none other than The Iron Sheik. He hates Chris Brown, he hates the Olympics for getting rid of wrestling and he hates…everything else.

Jones then proceeded to showcase some of Sheik's most memorable tweets.

Related Memes

FACK

Fucking Bullshit, often misspelt as simply FACK to represent Sheik’s accent, is a memetic statement from a shoot interview with the Sheik conducted by RFVideos in 2007. An excerpt was uploaded to their YouTube channel which has received over 700,000 views. The comments on the video can be seen full of shitposts which mutate the statement in memetic fashion^[3]:

A soundbite of the Iron Sheik emphatically saying “FACK” was used to close Botchamania^[4] episodes for several years is now continually used in the various mock-opening credits in the series along with other wrestling-related memes, most notably in the fan opening made by Tri.Moon on YouTube:

This video acheived popularity and notoriety among Botchamaniacs, and Botchamania producer Maffew currently uses it for the series’ openings.^[4]

Break His Back, Make Him Humble

This statement is taken from a 2006 shoot interview with MWF/Boston Wrestling, in which the Iron Sheik talks about how he will “break his back, make him humble, then fuck his ass”(1:53) referring to laying his signature submission move, the Camel Clutch, on rival wrestler Brian Blair. The statement was humorous to the viewers, especially concerning Sheik’s hypocritical homophobia combined with his threats to sodomise Blair.

Iron Sheik expressions have occasionally been used in image macros featuring him.

Death

On June 7th, 2023, it was announced via his social media^[7] that the Iron Sheik had passed away, with a message being posted by the social media manager to RESPECT THE LEGEND FOREVER, with the post earning over 12.6 million views and 103,000 likes in ten hours (shown below).

Search Interest

Search interest for “iron sheik fack” shows marked increase following the respective uploads of the interviews to media platforms like YouTube^[5].

References