Ranking heel WWE Champions #3-The Iron Sheik

The Iron Sheik has certainly proven to be a cult favorite over the last fifteen years due to his outlandish behavior.  Using Cage Match and The History of WWE for results, the Iron Sheik had twenty-eight total matches for the WWE World title, first beating Bob Backlund at Madison Square Garden on December 26, 1983.  He went on to lose the belt to Hulk Hogan in the same venue on January 28, 1984, beginning Hogan’s ground-breaking reign as WWE champion as the company was nationalizing their product.

            For his clean wins, he mostly beat job guys such as Ken Jugan, Sal Bellomo, and John Callahan.  He beat “Chief” Jay Strongbow on December 27, 1983, which was not clean, and proceeded to beat him several more times throughout his reign.  The results I have for those wins do not list the finish and it is possible they shared the same finish as the December 27 match, and I did not include those in his clean win total.  He never lost clean, excluding his loss to Hogan to end his reign, so his reign has that as a strength I guess.  He lost via disqualification two times to Bob Backlund and once to Ivan Pitski.  Here are the overall stats and percentages for his reign…

28 total matches

21 Overall wins-75%

10 Clean wins-36%

5 non-clean wins-18%

4 Losses-14%

2 Draws-7%

1 Unknown finish against Ivan Putski on January 15, 1984

            Comparing Sheik to Ivan Koloff and Billy Graham, he ranks number three, just looking at overall clean wins.  Overall, the Iron Sheik lacked any tangible and credible wins, and seems to compare well to Ivan Koloff’s.

            Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheik won the WWE tag belts at WrestleMania I on March 31, 1985 but they did not have a particularly good run.  They lost to Barry Windham and Mike Rotundo numerous times, including singles losses to both guys for Sheik.  They only won against job guys and one sole win against the British Bulldogs, before losing the belts to Windham and Rotundo in three minutes on June 17, 1985.  On a side-note, Sheik won the Most Underrated Wrestler award in the Observer for 1980.