The wrestling world lost a legend this week when Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri, better known as the Iron Sheik, passed away quietly in his home.
Since then, tributes have poured in from both within the wrestling business and from non-wrestling personalities who have met the Sheik at one point in their lives.
Although the internet was already awash with Sheik stories before his passing, some older ones are now coming to light, including one from one of his closest archrivals, Sgt. Slaughter.
Although this particular story had been mentioned before, it was given new context courtesy of Dave Meltzer and his Wrestling Observer.
Iron Sheik misunderstands meaning of drug test, hilarity ensues
Meltzer noted in this week’s WON, which opened with a tribute to the Iron Sheik, that Sheik returned to WWE in 1992 and he began feuding with Slaughter under the name Colonel Mustafa.
By 1992, though, Sheik was no longer the same man he was the decade prior and issues with his weight and substance abuse ultimately led to his getting fired once again.
However, some of the circumstances around Sheik’s final moments in WWE in 1992 were somewhat comical. According to Meltzer, when Vince McMahon summoned Sheik to his office and told him that the drug test results came up positive, Sheik began celebrating.
This was because his grasp of English wasn’t the best and so he thought the word “positive” meant “positive result”. But since in this case it meant “positive for presence of a drug”, Vince had to explain to Sheik that “positive” wasn’t a good thing in this case and Sheik had to be fired as a result.
The Iron Sheik continued to have drug problems for many years after his WWE release but was said to have gotten clean around 2013 after his wife had left him.
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