Original subtitles

Let me tell The Sheik something.

I've been stabbed in the middle of that ring.

I've been burned.

Sheik, that's one for you!

One, Sheik!

Bruiser Brody, zero!

[Narrator] The original innovator of

hardcore wrestling, The Sheik

broke all of the rules in and out of the ring.

The Sheikh has something in his hand.

The Sheik was ultra-violent at a time when pro wrestling

was still presented as a sport.

[Announcer] 30-minute time limit.

-The Sheik! -Watch the fire!

The Sheik was the first one to use a fireball.

The first one to bring a snake into the ring.

I mean, he was banned from New York City

for starting riots.

Wild and crazy gimmicks.

Far beyond what you believed

could happen in a wrestling match.

Oh, man.

My uncle broke the rules. Got away with it.

Sheik has gone completely mad,

as he always does.

A legendary figure...

The fireman of pro wrestling heads to the

Detroit Cobo Arena.

The Sheik lived a life of violence, mystery,

and a strict devotion to the secrets of wrestling.

He created a shroud of secrecy around

his personal life, so that he could be fully immersed

as The Sheik of Araby, the wild man from Syria.

Even his grandkids called him Sheik,

and if you called him anything else

he wouldn't answer to it.

But as a promoter and a star,

The Sheik made sure he always came out on top,

even as that star began to fade.

The Sheik is a cautionary tale...

for what happens when

you got a dragon nobody ever slays.

So far, it's been The Sheik all the way.

He just didn't accept the fact that he was getting old,

and that he was no longer at the top of the wrestling heap.

[indistinct shouting]

And it almost cost him his life.

A lot of pain.

He kept it real, you know what I mean?

And he couldn't walk away.

He had so much love for the business.

Agh!

I have no doubt he would have liked to...

die in the ring.

♪

At 229 pounds of Arabia...

The Sheik.

I've been a lifelong fan of The Sheik because

the first time I saw him, I was struck by the aura,

the presence, the magnitude...

of The Original Sheik, himself.

I'm Jim Cornette.

Before my 40 year career in pro wrestling,

I was a fan of The Original Sheik.

When The Sheik would come into the arena,

the mood would change.

The fans would sense that something was different.

He had an aura. He had a presence.

You could feel it.

The greatest example was in 1988

at the Cobo Arena in Detroit.

All the fans in the arena,

you could tell they were tensing up.

They were waiting for something.

Now, all of a sudden,

in comes a stretch limousine.

It was amazing!

He pulled all the way onto the floor of the arena,

where everybody in the building could see.

And the driver gets out and opens the door,

and out steps The Sheik in the headdress,

and a three-piece suit,

and dozens of gold chains around his neck.

And the place erupted. "Oh my God, it's him!"

There's a match going on.

People are getting dropkicked and thrown around.

They don't care about that, they want to see...

The Sheik.

And he walks right into the locker room with

a bunch of people carrying his bags.

That set the tone for the evening.

The Sheik is in the building.

Never seen anything like this!

He was the greatest...

in almost every category.

And not because he's my uncle.

He proved that he was.

Hi, I'm Sabu.

I'm a nephew of The Sheik.

He made people believe even though they thought they knew

wrestling were bullshit, they knew he wasn't.

Sheik laid down the foundation for what

would be called hardcore wrestling.

My name is Rob Van Dam. I was trained by

The Original Sheik to be a pro wrestler.

He's still influencing the business now.

There's so many characters that have been

influenced by something that he did.

Right after the drop.

[indistinct shouting]

He has an almost inhuman expression. Oh!

Modern wrestling fans are used to chaos.

They're used to simulated violence.

They're used to furniture breaking and

people being run over with cars.

That didn't happen in the wrestling of the 50s,

60s, and 70s because

credibility was foremost, believability.

This is best two out of three falls.

When The Sheik debuted full-fledged,

he would still wrestle.

They're pummeling each other!

'Cause The Sheik could wrestle.

Here's a leg torture hold.

You know, he didn't become The Sheik in one night.

It took a while.

In need of a character to make himself memorable,

Ed Farhat draws on his ethnic background

to turn himself into a villain

that will shock middle America.

People actually were frightened

of this Arab madman...

because Arabs, in those days, they were something

very, very strange and very foreign.

The Sheik!

You always had foreigners in wrestling.

They were dark and mysterious from other lands.

The Great Togo!

And that's what The Sheik built on

throughout the entire decade of the 1950s.

♪

This image as a rich but insane

Middle Eastern sheik...

The Sheik from Arabia.

Can you imagine the arrogance of The Sheik?

Early on, he had a slave girl that he brought to the ring.

It was his wife, Joyce.

But her name was Princess Salima.

Makes his woman kiss his boots.

And he would berate her...

and abuse her.

He's slapping her, Bill.

And then, he would take his time to kneel down

and do his prayers,

where he would pray to Allah

for the strength to overcome his opponent.

He would only do his prayers when the audience was

"respectful and quiet." And so,

if he thought anybody was making any noise,

he would stop and then start over.

But as the gimmick got wilder and crazier,

much of the wrestling left the matches

and instead it was all chaos.

What's he got in his hand?

He would pull out a stick or a pencil out of his tights,

and he would stab the opponent in the head with it.

Looks like a hammer or something.

He'd be throwing chairs into the ring,

and tearing up ringside.

Not a crowd pleaser exactly.

It was chaotic as it could be.

It was, fight on the floor.

Fight with the chair.

It was everything but a wrestling match, ha.

My name is Dory Funk Jr.

And I used to wrestle with The Sheik.

Sheik always and forever

stood for blood and gore.

Every time that I hit him with the fork,

blood was shooting from his arm...

or from his head.

This is brutal, fans.

This is Abdullah The Butcher.

I have wrestled The Sheik.

We knew for a fact that the fans were scared of us.

Just annihilated in that ring.

We done a lot of shit.

And then when finally, when The Sheik got stabbed

with his own pencil and he started bleeding...

[cheering]

The people would go out of their minds.

Yes, yes!

You're gonna pay, Sheik!

You go ahead, burn me! Burn 'em all!

One of the things that caused the most commotion

was when The Sheik would throw fire.

The Sheik has got that fire!

Oh! And he's burning him badly.

That was explained by the promoters and the announcers

that The Sheik knew some way to magically

produce fire from his fingertips.

What it was, was magician's flash paper with a little

incendiary thing that you could hide on your finger.

He always kept it in his trunks.

Then when he hit it...

[whooshing]

And in the arena, the match might be crazy enough

and people would be screaming.

But when the fire came out...

Oh! Hey! Come on.

A gasp would erupt from the people.

[gasping]

And he throws fire!

[gasping] He's throwing fire.

I still got a mark.

[Abdullah] I'm serious. [Off-screen] Yeah, look at that.

You see it?

If I wouldn't have turned my head,

I would've been blind today.

It was like the ancient gladiator days,

like the Roman Colosseum.

Burned so badly that now they bring the stretcher.

A lot of people say that the Sheik was the originator

of hardcore wrestling.

Bull Curry was doing the same kind of thing in the 40s,

but The Sheik popularized IT.

He made it more mainstream.

He made it more profitable.

Ugly situation.

And the crowd loved to hate him, right?

I think he fed off that.

Oh, what terrific action in here now!

There was a lot of animosity back in the day.

You know, being that he was

a first generation Lebanese American.

[commentary] We were wondering a moment ago

if The Sheik understood English.

My grandmother, grandfather was born in Lebanon.

So, when they came into this country there,

they came to Detroit.

Detroit and Lansing was a pretty big hub for Arabs

at the time.

He was known in the neighborhood as a

tough kid that you didn't want to cross.

That's just who he was.

As a young kid, he wasn't even old enough

to enlist in the army.

But he lied on his application,

and once he was in the army, he did some boxing

and some wrestling there.

After he was in the military and came back,

he went into the trades a little bit and

he taught himself how to do electrical work.

Then he met Bert Ruby, who was a promoter...

and in training with him, they developed the thought,

because of his Arab descent, it would make a lot of sense

for him to take on this Sheik persona.

242 pounds, The Sheik!

[booing]

In an era where most wrestlers maintained

their characters outside of the ring,

The Sheik takes his dedication to

a whole new level.

Kayfabe, in wrestling,

was the aura of believability,

and the kayfabe mindset meant that you were,

to everyone in public, always to present

the personality that you claimed to be on television

and at the wrestling matches.

From the time that The Sheik first found this gimmick,

he started removing proof of who he was really.

The Sheik took it to the extreme.

Probably to the most extreme it's ever been taken.

He has put himself in some hypnotic state.

He was, committed to not expose The Sheik

because that was just anti...

kayfabe.

He never used his real name.

If you called The Sheik's house,

and you asked for Ed, he would hang up on you.

You had to ask, "Is Sheik there?"

Sheik...

That's all you heard, was The Sheik.

Yeah, when we'd have dinner, he had the wrestlers over,

and one table in the other room was heels,

and the babyfaces in the other room. I was thinking,

why are all the bad guys sitting together?

And why are all the good guys sitting together, you know?

But then I figured it out, he was kayfabe-ing.

He would always kayfabe,

even when it wasn't necessary.

When The Sheik was out in public, I mean,

he didn't speak to...

people he didn't know at a restaurant or something.

You know, he was a man of few words.

And any time the waiter or waitress would come by

and be within earshot,

he'd switch it right back to, ah, Arabic.

He became a character.

And, in his mind,

that's kind of being a con.

And he milked it for all it was worth.

I think The Sheik had realized that he had hit on

a gimmick that was once in a lifetime.

Truly the wild man of professional wrestling.

If he protected it, if he worked it, if he always...

embodied that character...

There he goes again! Right into the throat!

That he would always be the top heel in wrestling.

He would always make a ridiculous amount of money.

But Ed Farhat's unwavering commitment to

living his life as The Sheik...

[indistinct shouting]

...often leads to dangerous encounters with fans

who believe the madness is real.

♪

A lot of fans were violent towards him.

He would leave shows and have fans try to

attack him outside the shows.

He had people stab him.

♪

One fan broke in the dressing room, and...

my uncle had his blade on him. And I was there,

and the guy came to my uncle and started saying shit.

My uncle just- [whooshing] Zipped him like in a 'Z'.

And he cut him, psh!

Almost his insides came out.

And in the newspaper,

the explanation they gave for the fan's injuries

was that he had been knocked through

a plate glass window...

in the process of being apprehended.

'Cause The Sheik had just ripped him...

from one end to the other.

♪

There was a night in Amarillo, Texas,

where The Sheik got so much heat

that a guy pulled a gun on him...

at point blank range.

The fans were stirred into a frenzy by The Sheik.

♪

"Kill him, kill him!"

A lot of times when the Sheik was on the card,

the local promoter might beef up the police, the security.

[indistinct shouting]

There was one night in Amarillo...

a guy pulled a gun on him!

And tried to fire.

[gun clicking]

And the gun jammed, and the cops tackled the guy.

And when they took the guy in and arrested him,

the policeman, trying to see

why the gun had jammed, fired the bullet.

[gunshot]

If the guy had pulled the trigger one more time,

he would've got The Sheik.

A lot of top wrestlers that were heels had that much heat.

But The Sheikh caused riots everywhere he went, and...

Sheik wasn't scared of anything.

With The Sheik drawing crowds in arenas

all over North America, Ed Farhat looks to

elevate his career as a promoter.

That's where you made the money in pro wrestling,

owning the thing.

You got first count.

In 1964, The Sheik buys Detroit's Big Time Wrestling,

packing the famed Cobo Arena with fans.

But in business, like in the ring,

he never breaks character.

When Sheik took over, nobody knew that

he owned the promotion.

He made his father-in-law, Francis Fleser,

the figurehead promoter,

and The Sheik called the shots in the ring.

And there's the camel clutch!

Sheik's wife, Joyce,

handled the paperwork and ran the office.

Yeah, Grandma was definitely the matriarch of our family,

and... she was the boss.

They were always a team, even behind the scenes,

you know, she was lockstep with him in the business.

In the mid 1960s, the city of Detroit, Michigan

had money, and they knew and liked wrestling.

The Cobo was a 12,000-seat building...

and they were coming close to or filling it up

on most occasions.

The Sheik before 12,500 fans

in the Detroit Cobo Arena.

The Sheik was a thinking business man.

He was the very first promoter in the country

who bought a mobile TV truck,

and he's gonna film his own matches at arenas

where he's already at.

So now you don't have to pay the TV studios anymore.

The Cobo Arena in Detroit was the hottest building

for pro wrestling in the country.

He outdrew the Detroit Pistons

who played there.

Any concert that played there.

Here's a man who set more attendance records around

the country than any other wrestler alive.

Every major name that worked for the NWA would come

to Detroit to wrestle for The Sheik.

It was like the WWE of the time.

It was the place where everybody wanted to work,

and the guys made most money there,

and it was the most popular.

He had power, he had pull.

So, it was just an onslaught of top stars from

every part of the country on the cards.

And when you own the promotion,

you can double sell tickets.

You can put stuff in your pocket.

Unless there's a state athletic commission

inspector there, nobody knows

how much money you took in!

And it's all in cash.

4, and 5, and $6 at a time.

Thousands of people.

In 1973, The Sheik reported

income of $400,000

on his income tax.

That's the equivalent of over $2 million

in today's money.

That's what he reported.

No wrestler in the world

made as much money as The Sheik.

The Sheik was everything back then.

He was a first generation Lebanese American.

He built his empire and his career from the ground up.

You know, and I think that is the American dream, right?

The Sheik spares no expense,

draping himself in luxury

to sell the image of a man who is powerful,

untouchable, and rich.

He had one house.

And then he had another house built, a giant house.

And, it was like four floors, indoor pool, gym,

5 or 10 acres of woods and creek and stuff.

It was beautiful.

Sauna in the house.

I think it had 35 rooms in it.

It was a big place.

And I go to myself, holy shit!

He worked hard for a living,

and I think he did like to play hard.

He liked cars...

suits, jewelry, traveling.

He definitely enjoyed being successful.

He had a Lincoln, and that was kind of

his signature vehicle.

He had about a thousand suits.

He wore a different suit every day.

No matter it was hot, cold.

He wore it every day. That was a style.

The man was not afraid of color,

and you could always find him when he wasn't wrestling

with tons of jewelry on, tons of rings,

lots of necklaces.

You're an entertainer, right?

You have to look the part. You understand?

He was The Sheik. He acted like he was royalty.

He was reckless.

He would go buy anything he thought he wanted, I mean,

because he had no idea of any limitations about him at all.

He was a fabulous businessman.

But I'm gonna tell the honest truth.

He had one weakness.

Gambling all the money that he had.

[chuckling] Las Vegas would wipe him out!

[laughing]

I mean, just like any other gambler, you know,

you always think you can win. You may win here or there,

but it's always the house wins.

He lived big and

he had to keep up the gimmick.

Insisting he remain the top draw,

The Sheik books himself to headline nearly every show.

United States Heavyweight Champion.

He's held that title longer than any other US

heavyweight champion in the history of the belt.

There is a lot of truth to the idea that a-

the main event star in wrestling should lose

only rarely, so that when you do it,

then that gets you over as the guy.

But The Sheik took it to extremes,

and The Sheik felt that if anyone was to

conclusively defeat him...

that it would take his heat away

and it would diminish his aura.

The Sheik has got a million tricks

so don't count him out.

I mean, if you're able to decide who is gonna be

on the card and who's not gonna be on the card,

why would you not assume that he would be the main event?

The United States heavyweight champion,

The Sheik.

He would sell for wrestlers.

He would bleed for 'em. He would do all those things.

But you couldn't beat him.

The Sheik never did a job.

And that was what made it even more shocking

on the rare occasion that he would.

One of the few times The Sheik agrees to

lose a match comes at a volatile moment

in Detroit's history.

1967, the city of Detroit had riots.

Four days of rioting, looting, and arson

rocked the city of Detroit.

It was over a situation where the police had raided

a certain bar in an African American area,

and the riots lasted for several days.

The Sheik's number one babyface,

his star attraction as a hero...

was a guy named Bobo Brazil.

Sheik saw an opportunity there because, at the Cobo,

the crowds were black and white.

Like a lot of places in the United States in the 60s,

the only place that you would go and see a really

integrated audience was at the wrestling matches.

In the late 1950s, early 60s, down in the South,

the whites and the blacks were separated,

and the blacks were usually separated to the

upper tiers of the arena, and...

they had chicken wire or something like that put up

in front of them. And, at one point,

The Sheik was on one of those shows, and...

he crawled up that chicken wire and tore it down...

and invited the black folks to come down

into the arena floor.

He was that kind of guy.

Being that he was a Lebanese-American,

he experienced racism himself growing up.

You know, he felt it.

And I think that, once he reached a position

where he was able to help other people,

he took advantage of it.

Once the riots started, The Sheik, thinking,

"What can I do to calm things down, to help?"

So, in that arena that night, you know,

there was at least 10,000 people,

and there was not only whites and blacks

and every kind of ethnicity.

In that arena that night, they were all one...

hoping that Bobo Brazil could beat The Sheik.

You're watching a championship bout.

Bobo Brazil and the wild man from Syria, The Sheik!

And when Bobo finally beat The Sheik...

♪

...the place exploded like I've never seen before.

Doing that, The Sheik helped heal the city of Detroit.

It settled down the tensions in the town.

And then, of course, Sheik beat him

two weeks later and won it back.

[chanting] Go, Sheik, go!

♪

Once responsible for the promotion's

greatest success, eventually The Sheik

becomes a liability for Big Time Wrestling.

If you have a hot heel that can't be stopped,

everybody wants somebody to stop him. But then,

if it goes on for so long that the people become

convinced that nobody can stop him,

they'll stop coming to see somebody try.

The winner with the Camel Clutch, The Sheik!

[booing]

Past 1975, the...

auto industry was, you know, starting to have problems.

The economy, you know, started to take effect.

That's why Big Time Wrestling started to fail,

because people really didn't have that extra money

to spend to see wrestling.

It was just a domino effect of the

economy and the promotion not drawing fans.

The Sheik always lived big.

The custom made suits, the jewelry,

the stretch limousines, the handlers, the helpers.

Suddenly, with business going down,

he didn't have the money coming in...

to cover the money going out.

How do you maintain that lifestyle?

Unfortunately, he couldn't keep it up.

Oh, The Sheik took off and ran away.

By the mid 1970s, the Sheik's Detroit promotion,

Big Time Wrestling, is struggling financially,

and its woes take a toll on locker room morale.

A lot of guys got pissed because either...

they were promised things that they weren't getting,

or they could just see the business going down,

and they started no showing the cards.

I remember a time when Bruno Sammartino

came to Cobo Arena.

If you're an East Coast guy, you're a Bruno fan.

You know, Bruno was everything.

And, after the show, Bruno says,

"Hey, you want to go out to dinner with me?"

So, I'll never forget,

we went to this Chinese restaurant.

And I go, "I hear you're going to be back here

in two weeks, you know,

with a return match against the Sheik."

He says, "I'm going to tell you something,

but don't say anything to anybody else.

I'm not coming.

The Sheik promised me $2,000 to come tonight,

and he gave me a check for $800.

So, I'm not showing up."

Money wasn't coming in,

and he couldn't afford to pay the wrestlers

what they thought they were worth.

Big time Wrestling had lost TV

in some of their other markets.

Finally, they lost TV in Detroit.

It was somewhere around late 1980,

that was the last event that Big Time Wrestling ran

in the Cobo Arena, the house that Sheik built.

One of the most popular places to see wrestling

in the United States for the previous 15, 20 years...

couldn't run it anymore.

That was pretty much the end of Big Time Wrestling.

Unfortunately, he wasn't making that money.

He was still spending it.

And so, the only thing that saved him

was the Japanese tours...

Because Giant Baba and All Japan Pro Wrestling

brought The Sheik to Japan.

Japan was the biggest money maker

in professional wrestling...

for a long time.

The Sheik had been in all these pictures, the fire...

and the snakes, and the blood, and the eyes.

But they'd only seen him in magazines and newspapers.

[Japanese commentary]

They went absolutely out of their minds for The Sheik.

He became an icon in a very short period of time.

The great city of Tokyo, when The Sheik walks down

the street, they actually stop traffic.

They were bloodthirsty.

♪

Buckets of blood everywhere.

They could do that in Japan,

and they could get away with it.

But then after a few years, again,

Japanese wrestling was very highly athletic.

The Sheik couldn't keep up.

Baba stopped bringing him to Japan.

He was not able to be booked almost anywhere else

in the United States because of his age

and the bridges that he had burned.

And, as the money dried up...

pretty soon he was just wandering around the house,

a 60-something year old man in a dilapidated mansion

that had seen its better days.

I mean, he'd spent all his, all his,

all his millions, and...

so he and Joyce were living in the kitchen.

Ah...

I can't go into it all the way because

it's embarrassing, but... He was losing his money.

Like, we had to sell the big house.

And so he was not, not penniless,

but he was going broke.

After they left the mansion...

it was still them, still two against the world,

so to speak. I mean, they were a tight pair.

And, to me, as their grandchild,

I never saw anything but...

my loving grandparents.

All the money and all the glory and all the fame

and the lifestyle, it was just not there anymore.

I mean, you've been the greatest heel

in the sport of professional wrestling

for how many years?

But now you're that older athlete

who can't perform at that level anymore.

You know, what's the guy to do?

Now past his prime,

The Sheik takes any booking he can get,

just to keep food on the table.

He'd go to Warren, Ohio, to a high school gym,

and do the same thing with Bobo Brazil that they

had done 20 years earlier in the Cobo Arena.

Instead of in front of 12,000 people,

it might be in front of 1200.

And he was born in the 20s...

and he was just trying to make a couple hundred dollars

here and there just to, you know,

keep food in his little kitchen.

His gimmick had gotten tired...

and he couldn't keep it up.

He was...

chasing a career down a rat hole.

All that obviously had to play a part in a late life crisis.

♪

And, he was trying to

recapture some former glory,

and try to do something to keep himself going

at the same time. I'm not a psychiatrist, but...

one would think that that had to be

uppermost in his mind is,

how can I keep doing this for very much longer?

How can I keep up the gimmick?

[indistinct shouting]

-The Sheik! -[applauding]

[speaking Arabic]

With injury and age driving him from the ring...

[host] ...anything you want.

The Sheik shifts to training the next generation,

starting with his nephew.

My mom and my uncle were the two youngest,

so my uncle always took care of my mother,

walked her to school every day,

beat up anybody who got in her way, and all that stuff.

And, my uncle used to beat up my dad.

They got a divorce when I was three years old,

but I'd see him around when I was five or six,

and he'd hit my mom.

Then my mom would call my uncle,

my uncle would come over and beat him up.

♪

And then one day, he comes to beat him up and

my dad was hiding under the bed, and I said,

that's what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna be The Sheik.

And have people hide under the bed from me.

[laughing]

I said, well, ---- him, I got my uncle.

He's more of a dad.

All up until I was 19, I was telling people,

"I'm gonna be a wrestler, I'm gonna be a wrestler,"

but I never did nothing towards it

other than amateur wrestling.

♪

I was 19 at a party, and...

these guys started shooting.

[gunshot]

One guy shot my one friend in the stomach.

-[gunshot] -Then took off running.

I ran after him and grabbed him, threw him down.

♪

He pushed the gun against my face,

and he hit my teeth and it shattered.

[gunshot]

So, it went in my nasal cavity and the back of

my throat, and it knocked out seven of my teeth.

So, when I got shot, I go, now's the time I gotta do it.

So, after a couple days, I got out of the hospital.

But my mom called my uncle and said

I wanted to be a wrestler, a pro wrestler.

The next day he came to my house, and he goes,

"Come on, we're going to camp. Pack your bag."

So I got in his car.

A limousine, by the way, and, he took me to his house,

and he goes, "This is the camp now.

You're not going to go home for another year.

You're going to be stuck here for a year.

And don't bitch when it hurts."

[chuckling] So the first seven months

he had me doing chores and chopping wood,

and I'd set the ring up in the morning and

tear the ring down at night and never get in it.

I never had a free minute.

Anytime he goes, "What are you doing?"

I go, "Nothing." He goes, "Okay, chop some wood."

He was always having me wash his car,

clean the house for no reason when it wasn't dirty.

And I never questioned him.

For the first year I was training,

he had two bad hips, could hardly move.

I'm sure he took pain pills,

but he never told me about them.

He was just a tough old mother----er.

He was just a tough guy.

Sabu doesn't just follow in The Sheik's footprints,

he carries his legacy into a new era,

adapting his style for a new generation.

Sabu did adopt a lot of The Sheik's mannerisms,

from the headdress to the looking up and pointing

in the sky, and the not speaking English.

But Sabu, of course, was more...

acrobatic and more of a death defying daredevil.

No, no, no!

I don't think The Sheik ever climbed to the top rope in

50 years, but the family connection was still there,

and that enabled the Sheik to, in some cases,

go along with Sabu and lend his historic reputation

to help get Sabu over.

I never copied him.

But he influenced me. What I do is my way.

It resembles something he would do, maybe, you know,

with the turban and stuff but...

He paved the way for me, but he didn't give it to me.

No, he made me earn it.

And if I didn't have it, he wouldn't back me up.

As Sabu's star rises, he brings in a new recruit

eager to learn the ways of The Sheik.

[cheering]

The fans love RVD!

It was just the tail end of '89,

before my 19th birthday when we met.

The Sheik had me get in the ring, and he just like,

boom, both hands on my throat,

and he just pushed me back to the corner

and he's choking me.

Make, make, you know, like pushing and pulling me,

making me- making me move in the corner a lot.

And then, those big eyes were looking at me

and his tongue's out.

Agh!

He was like so committed, and he bit my nose.

And man, I about peed my pants,

you know what I mean?

Like it was a scary experience.

♪

We would wrestle for hours.

Then we would jump in a swimming pool.

His wife would make dinner.

It was a very personal experience that made me,

not a student, but part of the family.

Sabu and I did a lot of training by ourselves

during that time, but Sabu was saying, you know,

that Sheik wasn't doing well or whatever,

and Sheik would sometimes come out and sit in a chair

and watch us for a little bit.

I'm sure there was always a part of him

that wanted to get back in the ring.

That's just who he was.

So, he kind of had a renaissance in

the late 80s and early 90s.

♪

After years on the sidelines and two hip surgeries,

The Sheik makes a final grab for the spotlight

back in Japan with death match promotion, FMW.

[crowd chatter]

Allah!

He was approached to do a fire match.

And it was in a baseball stadium.

I want to say that held like

65,000 people or something like that.

The idea of the match was that my grandpa...

wrestled with Sabu, my cousin,

as a tag team against a Japanese tag team.

Instead of ropes, it was barbed wire.

And they wrapped that barbed wire with

kerosene-soaked linen.

They didn't tell me I was having a fire match

until a couple of days before.

The ring didn't all go on fire,

just the parts where they wanted,

but the fire was too big.

Like, sucked up the air in the middle,

and even the logo in the middle was melting under you.

And was only in there probably 5 or 10-

5 or 6 minutes and it was too hot.

They must've not anticipated

the fire would get as big.

But they got stuck in the ring, and tragically,

the whole thing went up in flames.

♪

The flames were taking up all of the oxygen,

so it was not only blisteringly hot,

but they couldn't breathe and they couldn't see.

And suddenly it just engulfed everything.

They're in the center of the ring' cause that's where

they could get the most oxygen.

And, Onita said to Sheik, "Sheik, this is bad."

He didn't know Onita could even speak English.

[indistinct shouting]

That's when Sheik was like, "Okay, something's wrong."

In Japan, The Sheik and Sabu find themselves

trapped in a ring of fire, battling for survival,

as a hardcore match spirals out of control.

They had done a practice run that afternoon,

and everything was fine.

But because it was a baseball stadium and

it was outdoors, winds are a factor.

And so, when the actual match took place,

things were going as rehearsed, the wind shifted.

Flames started like going horizontally across the ring

and started melting the ring.

Sabu and one of the Japanese wrestlers

were able to get out of the ring quickly.

My grandpa was locked up at that point with Onita.

They were in there for maybe 15 or 20 more seconds,

and that was a mistake.

They really struggled to get out of the ring.

It is really hard to watch because you can see

he's still trying to do his job.

[indistinct shouting]

He crawls out of the ring.

I run around the other side, I throw water on him.

He goes, "What are you doing?"

I said, "I'm trying to put you out.

You're smoking." And he goes,

"No, I gotta throw fire still."

I was getting his hand wet.

Skin is dropping off his body,

and he's still trying to do...

Sheik stuff.

You know, but...

they'd gone too far.

My grandpa ended up with

third degree burns over 20% of his body.

I was at Grandma's.

3 or 4 in the morning, a call came in because...

the time difference with Japan,

and Grandpa didn't really let on that he was that hurt.

But Grandma could hear it in his voice.

When The Sheik got on the plane,

people in first class were disgusted because his skin

was still burning and they can smell it.

You know, it was quite the journey

to get him back from Japan.

You know, a 14-hour flight back home with

third degree burns all over your body.

I don't think most people would have

honestly survived that trip.

I just remember he was in a wheelchair

and he was wrapped like a mummy.

He didn't let on at all that he was hurting.

Grandma did a lot of his care at home,

unbandage him and put the cream on it

and bandage him up.

I'm sure he was...

in horrible pain.

That was not the end for him.

He was like, "Oh, I'm burned?

That's fine. I'll just recover from this

and I'll get back in the ring."

With age and injury catching up...

The Sheik fights to extend his wrestling career

alongside Sabu.

In 1995, World Championship Wrestling,

one of the two major companies

in the United States, has Sabu booked

on a pay per view event,

and as a special attraction, he brings his uncle,

The Sheik, to be at ringside with him.

And I did a flip out of the ring,

and I hit my opponent and...

his leg got stuck under me, and- Ch!

It broke his leg.

Oh! Whoa!

[cheering]

And there's the Sheik, 69 years old,

out there with a broken leg,

and he still threw the fireball!

That's part of I think him wanting to make sure

that the business moved ahead.

It didn't matter how, how badly he was hurt.

You have to get back up and finish the match.

There you see The Sheik right at ringside.

It wasn't 'til we got back behind the curtain,

we had to get a wheelchair for him.

He never complained about it.

Tony, the man just threw a ball of fire

in the man's face!

At that point, I think he knew his body,

it was time to call it quits.

I felt at ease that he was gonna stop 'cause I was

always worried, he wants one more,

he's gonna have a heart attack or his

leg's gonna break again, or you know,

I was always worried about that.

But, it was awesome because he finally says,

"I'm gonna stop."

You know, he had reached the pinnacle of his career,

and it was done at that point,

and he kind of just moved into the family life.

He still was The Sheik in public.

And it may have just been, like, out of habit,

because he had been doing it for, like,

literally 30 years.

After devoting so much of his life

to the wrestling business,

Ed Farhat now focuses on family.

[singing] Happy birthday to you.

He came to Grandparent's Day

in second grade.

I think that's when I realized, okay,

something's up, because all the other grandparents

were like peeking in our classroom and

asking for autographs, and...

we're just a bunch of eight-year-olds,

and I just happened to have the grandpa with

a shirt opened, camel necklace on his chest,

yelling Allah to the ceiling in the classroom.

[laughing]

I never, ever questioned whether he thought

we were the center of the universe.

He showed us that every day.

We all had a decent amount of time to know and love him.

Um, you know, it's never enough.

By the early 2000s,

years of a lifetime in the ring

take their toll on The Sheik's body.

He had some organ failures,

and he had suffered from multiple myeloma.

Which is a cancer.

One thing about our family is that we rally.

And so, that was a time for all of us to rally around him.

And, and we did.

I would say the last two years

of my grandfather's life,

we were in the hospital every other day.

My grandmother never wanted him to be alone.

At that time, I lived on my own in Lansing.

I was 19, and um...

Grandma had called.

And I said, "He's gone, isn't he?"

♪

Not a glamorous death, but...

[sniffling] he was surrounded with love.

And that's what matters.

♪

I was 27 when he died.

I had a long time with him. I feel grateful that I had

as much time with him as I did.

He was a pillar of our family,

so that was a major loss for us.

I went to Japan, and he died when I was in the air.

I didn't know it.

All the boys were saying, "I'm sorry about your uncle,"

I thought because he was sick.

And finally, Goldberg goes,

"Sorry to hear about your uncle." I said,

"Wait a minute, you know, I barely know you.

Why do you care about my uncle?" He goes,

"Well, he passed away last night," and I said,

"What?" When he told me that, they said,

"Sabu, you have to go get set up for the entrance."

So it was a 20 minute ride around the Tokyo Dome.

And I'm talking to my aunt, she goes,

"Yeah, he passed away last night.

But you got to do your job like he'd want you to."

I said, "But ----, you know...

he was more my, my father," you know...

[gasping] More than anything.

And she goes, "You know he'd want you to do your job."

You can't have a heartbreak, you know,

affect your professionalism. So,

I stayed and did my match, and then when I got home,

I missed the funeral.

But to me, funerals are just to show people

who are still alive that you cared.

Person that died knows you cared.

At his funeral ceremony, even the priest...

referred to him as Sheik,

and I took one of the roses

off the top of his casket that I still have...

[sniffling] to this day.

[crying]

My friend was gone.

Years after the Sheik's passing,

his legacy is solidified into wrestling history as

he's inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.

To be inducting The Sheik, of course, you know,

what could be better?

I was proud always to represent him.

They wanted Sabu, of course, to induct him.

But Sabu is not big on vocabulary.

The Original Sheik was hardcore before

any of us heard of hardcore.

So, you know, he asked if I would go with him and

do most of the talking, and of course, of course,

you know, let's do this.

It was it was a nice moment to see that appreciation

be given to him by a new generation.

And he gouges my eyes...

I mean, he started at the dawn of television,

and his last appearance was on pay per view.

Nobody had that kind of drawing power,

and nobody was in as many different places,

doing as many different things

for as long as the Sheik was.

[indistinct shouting]

Yeah, one of my favorite objects is the little doll

of the bloody Sheik. This came out,

you know, way after he had passed away.

He was a good man.

He taught a lot of people how to work.

You know, I've always been proud that

I'm a non-conformist.

And I have no doubt that that is...

me taking after The original Sheik,

who brought me into this life.

Uh-oh, here comes the chair!

Both men outside the ring.

But it's not over.

He put asses in the seats.

People wanted to go and see the wild, crazy Sheik.

Most wrestlers I don't think...

last that long.

The Sheik had a very tragic aspect,

and that was that he lived an illusion of who he was.

Allah!

And in some ways, it was absolutely charming.

And because he did such a marvelous job of it.

The Sheik looks like

he's been through World War three.

You know, anytime you see a wrestler using a metal chair

to smack someone or

do something slightly nefarious

during a match, you know, whether that wrestler

knows it or not, he's paying homage to my grandpa.

And we take a little bit of pride in that.