The Sheik

Perfect.

Put the two books personally that Brian wrote at a par because the Sheik book taught me a lot of stuff about territories I did not know.

And about the

Sheik himself as a person and like how the business ran.

I mean, just Monsoon is just a much more interesting

character.

And the Sheik book to me had the final chapter, the final page and a half.

It's my favorite wrestling writing, to be honest with you.

Oh, yeah, duh.

So it's Dick Worley, Nick Bockwinkel, Buddy Rose, Doug Summers, Paul Ellering, The Sheik, Nord the Barbarian, The Russian.

Wait a minute.

I don't think some of these...

But, His second movie kit is a movie called I Like to Hurt People that is a documentary, quote unquote, about 70s wrestling, but treats the entire thing like it's real.

So it has Andre the Giant and fucking Dusty Rhodes and The Sheik all giving interviews, but as if all of their feuds are real.

And it rocks.

High recommend.

Funk was a legitimate amateur wrestler, the disciplined technician.

The Sheik was the brutality craziness.

Their matches were legendary.

Sheik became the brass knuckles champion in West Texas.

And really, it was where the Sheik first got over was in 1958 through 1964 in West Texas.

Number four would be Mike DiBiase.

especially natural opponent for Funk.

But there was also those other guys I mentioned, too, were real important.

So it was hard for me to get a spot there, a full-time spot, so I only worked a few times.

One of my first matches I refereed was Terry Funk in a chain match against Sabu's uncle, the Sheik, the original Sheik, Eddie Farhat.

That's why Sabu and I could get along so good, because I told him the story during the chain match.

Everybody was all juiced up.

lost him.

I got to work with all those guys in that era like Wild McDaniel and Dusty.

When I started full-time for Florida Championship Wrestling, I'm going to name a few guys that were just finishing up their 25-year career, like Bobo Brazil had a couple years left, and I got to work with Bobo Brazil and Ernie the Cat Lad and The Sheik and a couple of those guys, those big names, that era.

Then the next era was Dusty and Dick.

And, and by the way, uh, uh, almost all those guys, uh, were people who lived in Georgia, guys in the business that lived in Georgia at that time.

And the two matches listed, Big Jim and Chief Jay Strongbow versus The Samoans, and Thunderbolt Patterson versus The Sheik.

[laughs] And they had advertised Bob Orton Jr. and, and some of those names at the start that were with, at the time, or possibly, uh, maybe up until that point, had been with the Poffos in ICW.

But that was right about the time that Roop and Orton bailed out of that and, and went to work for Watts in Louisiana, right? Um-

This is right around that period of time, correct, 1981.

And The Sheik had been trying to help the Poffos because he and Angelo Poffo went back all those years, and he had really nowhere else to work.

His territory, they'd closed the Cobo, et cetera.

So he was trying to work with The Poffos as well, and was a big name in Georgia that Thunderbolt could bring in that was not worried about pissing off the NWA.

That's the one.

You think this is a problem, when Arezzi did his convention in '93 and he had The Sheik, The Sheik was like running around the lobby chasing people.

[laughs]

The people in the hotel had no idea what was going on.

Roger says, I just came across a wrestling card from 1978 when Dutch wrestled for the Goulas promotion.

He had a match where he challenged the Sheik for the United States title.

Did Dutch have many matches with the Sheik? And what was it like being in the ring with him?

Well, the Sheik, you had to make sure he liked you before you went in the ring.

Because the Sheik had a habit of taping a razor blade on every finger he had.

So if a fan jumped him, he'd do this.

He'd come down with it.

And that's how he kind of protected himself.