Teacher Versus Student

As all of us moderately-informed Sheik-historians know, Our Hero did get to train guys for Verne Gagne only a couple years after taking bumps in a shitty barn with the likes of Flair, Patera, Brunzell and, shit, even the amazing Greg Gagne. I don't know what makes him really amazing, but the guy did wrestle and stuff. Shit, it's amazing enough that guys get paid to roll around in the ring wearing underwear.

Anyways, one of the dudes that Sheik trained was Ricky Steamboat. Ricky went on to many successes in wrestling, including noteworthy feuds with Ric Flair and Randy Savage. He also won the Intercontinental Title, WCW Heavyweight Title and, um, probably a bunch of other belts since his tag partner was Jay Youngblood, who was supposedly awesome. I wanted to do something a little different, maybe a little left field, so I decided to link to two different matches that Sheik has with his most famous trainee. Unfortunately, I have not gotten to see any encounters that Sheik with his other two prized students, Dr. Tom Pritchard and Buck Zumhoff, but maybe some day!



Macho Man was out and he was acting crazy, which kinda stole some of Sheik's heat as far as the television audience was concerned. Like here's this huge feud going down between Macho and Ricky, meanwhile Sheik is just the Iranian dude that people are supposed to hate. Sheik did a leapfrog, which is impressive for a guy with a huge gut and drug problems. Ricky actually wins with a fistdrop from the top rope, which is still amazing even considering this was 1984. I love fistdrops in wrestling; they're the only move that anyone can do well. Ricky and Macho tease a fight, but they don't. Meanwhile, Sheik's star fades a little bit more.

Click on this link to see this pretty good match that they had back in Mid Atlantic. This is possibly November of 1980, so this shows how things changed, not just in how the style of matches changed, but also, how the audiences were back in the day. The crowds believed, man. Sometimes I can't believe it, but it's some wild shit.

Sheik does his kickass double underhook release suplex. Please, someone correct me so I can feel more up-to-date on what the names of wrestling moves are. I'm depending on it!

Oh yeah, the finish was out of nowhere. Sheik was on offense for like 90% of the match and all of the sudden, Ricky grabs the legs and win. Just great to see, even if the video quality sucks ass and it kinda looks like blobs moving around from time to time.



Sheik decides not to talk about training Steamboat and instead decides to put over that he trained the U.S. Olympic team. I love it. Also, he claims to have trained Flair, Brunzell and some other dudes, which might be lying! It hurts to have to admit the lies of my hero, but it's okay, I think the Iron Sheik Youtube Review will get through it.