Tribute To The Sheik

01-20-03

A giant has fallen.

Saturday Morning, January 18th, 3:15am. Ed Farhat passes away at the age of 78. That doesn't mean much to most fans of the mat wars, but the wrestling of today came from matches Ed Farhat had over his forty-year career. Ed Farhat was better known as the Sheik, and the Sheik may be the true innovator of Hard Core.

The Sheik started out in the early TV wrestling boom of the 1950s. Trim, tough, and excellent at getting the crowd to hate him, the Sheik garnered huge ratings for his feuds with Johnny Valentine, Buddy Rodgers, Antonino Rocca, Classy Freddie Blassie, and his most famous early feud with the late Bobo Brazil. He acquired many titles, including the NWA American Heavyweight Championship, the number two title in the number one promotion in the World. He traveled everywhere, sometimes performing in as many as nine countries in a month, and half a dozen US states. He brought his legendary brawling style around the world, and become a mainstream star in Japan, Toronto, and of course, his home base of Detroit.

On his tours in the 1960s, he came toe to toe with the great Abdullah the Butcher. Abdullah could match the Sheik for brutality, and their feud, much like the Terry Funk/Mick Foley feud of the 1990s, seemed to be more about proving who could dish out and take more. These matches can be seen as the beginning of the modern brawler style; truckloads of foreign objects used in battles that raged around the ring, into the crowd, and occasionally into the parking lot. These matches went around the world, and some claim that their famous brawls in Japan and Puerto Rico brought about the violent styles that still exist on both islands to this day.

Farhat ran the Detroit wrestling territory for almost twenty years. While the territory became stale by the mid-1970s, it turned a large profit many years and the television show Big Time Wrestling often outdrew all other US wrestling programs. During this period, the Sheik would wrestle as the top draw, often bringing in older feuders such as Brazil, Abdullah, Blassie, and Sweet Daddy Siki, and the top NWA stars such as a then-thin Dusty Rhodes, Superstar Graham, The Funk family, and Harley Race. Big Time Wrestling often featured the Sheik in cage matches, chain matches, falls count anywhere melees, and barbed-wire brawls. Watching Big Time Wrestling, you feel like it's ECW in the late 90s, with matches that go long and violent.

Not even Liberace could resist The Sheik.

Farhat aged, ending Big Time Wrestling in 1980, but he continued to travel the world, though he was over 50. He was a star in Puerto Rico and Japan, and when Japanese mad man Atsushi Onita started the ultra-violent FMW promotion, the Sheik and his nephew Sabu were there. The Sheik competed in barbed-wire matches, even though he was nearly 60 years old. His career ended for the most part after a fire match in Japan. The fire got too hot, and everyone else bailed, but the Sheik was having trouble getting out and received severe burns. He later had a heart attack, I believe in a Japanese taxi, and that put the final nail in a career that spanned five decades.

Along with the introduction of brawling as a basis for a promotion, the Sheik also trained a great many stars of today, including Sabu, Rob Van Dam, and Scott Steiner. It is no coincidence that Sabu and Van Dam had a classic brawling feud in ECW. The Sheik always loved that type of wrestling, and over the years, he made several special appearances at shows around the world, as the patron saint of the wild brawl. Without Sheik, there is no Sandman, Mick Foley or Tommy Dreamer.

One of the greatest tributes to the Sheik is a film made in the early 1980s called I like to Hurt People. Supposedly about a group trying to ban the Sheik, the real reason this was made was to highlight homemade rock played over the Sheik's greatest matches. The tape also featured great interviews with Rhodes, the Funks, and behind-the-scenes segments. Some call it amateurish, but I think it's a perfect way to be introduced to the King of Pain.

I doubt the WWE will mention his passing, but the fact that they will use a wild, object-laden brawl at some point is as good a tribute as you can get to the man who started it all.

Chris Garcia