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Posts Tagged ‘Mick Foley’

The Sheik

Tuesday, April 11th, 2017

As you may know, I don’t watch or understand any wrestling from the past two to three decades, but I retain a fascination and nostalgia from the stuff I did watch in the ’80s. One of the iconic villains of that era was The Iron Sheik, a cartoonish embodiment (along with his fur-hat-wearing Soviet tag team partner Nikolai Volkoff) of America’s most absurd fears of scary foreigners. Looking back it seems like a put-on, a parody, an Andy Kaufman style evisceration of the stereotypes you’d have to be a dummy to believe in, the communists and Middle Easterners who come in and tell us we are weak Americans and then demand that we be respectful as they (gasp) make us sit through their national anthems. And then are outraged when we boo.

It was also a time when some people, due to economic anxiety or whatever, didn’t understand that these were fictional characters. Many Americans presumably believed that the Iron Sheik was real, that this Persian man was behaving this way not because he was an entertainer, but because those guys really hate America, you know? And  in the copious vintage footage included in this very enjoyable 2014 documentary by director Igal Hecht we see the red-faced fury of some of these fans. In interviews we hear about the danger of the Sheik’s “heat” from the crowd, people showing up with guns and shit. Every great heel tells a story like this (the wrestling villain’s humblebrag), but I bet the Middle Eastern angle means he had to be even more careful than Roddy Piper did. (read the rest of this shit…)

Beyond the Mat

Saturday, March 18th, 2000

Now to be honest I am not usually the type of dude to go to the documentarian type pictures. In fact, I never even seen one before in my life unless you count watching the news on TV. But this Beyond the Mat was playing at one of the multiplexes in my area so I decided to broaden my horizons and what not. Turns out there were a few others trying to broaden their horizons, because this was the type of crowd that yells “YEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!” when the Freddy claws pop out of the guy in the X-Man preview, and who randomly yell out little jokes from the south park cartoons, you know, to be funny.

This is a documentary about the real lives of professional wrestlers, and I will tell you straight off the bat this movie is great even for those of us who don’t watch wrestling or south park. I mean I like the Roddy Piper pictures as much as the next guy, I’ve watched a little grapple here and there, but I don’t know what the fuck a mankind is or the rock or whatever. I mean who knows. It doesn’t matter. (read the rest of this shit…)