Devastating news again hit the world of professional wrestling this week as the Iron Sheik,

Hossein, Saucro, Ali, Viziri died Wednesday at age 81. Simply put, the Iron Sheik was one of the

greatest and many will argue the greatest villain in wrestling history. He won the first

Battle Royal in WWF history and years later ended Bob Backlund's

1,470 day reign as WWF world heavyweight champion. He also solidified the split of WWF from

the NWA with that and remains to this day the only Iranian champion in WWE history. Now, that title change over

Backland and the Iron Sheek's villainous character set the stage for the crowning of Hulk Hogan

as the biggest baby face in professional wrestling history, or at least in modern history,

there are arguments to be made about wrestling in earlier years.

He won the title off Sheik one month after he had taken it from Backland,

officially kickstarting Hulkomania and that 1,474-day title reign.

Now, many have said Hogan would not be Hogan without Sheik, and WWF would have never reached its incredible level of success

in the mid-1980s without their program.

That has always been an inarguable fact to me.

Sheik made Hogan.

He was the perfect foil for Hogan at the time,

and then he went on to serve in the exact same role, basically,

against Sergeant Slaughter.

Sheik, along with Nikolai Volkov, were absolute heat magnets,

waving the Iranian and Soviet Union flags in unison against all different American counterparts. They won the tag team titles off the U.S. Express at WrestleMania 1, which was the second

title change in wrestling pay-per-view history. And they wrestled at the infamous WrestleMania 3

and the Pontiac Silverdome as well. Sheik was part of Cindy Lopper's rock and wrestling. He went back

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