Sheik Out

Back in the days of our youth, JB and I couldn't wait for Sunday mornings. It wasn't the Sara Lee coffee cake that we had for breakfast every Sunday. And, as much I would like to say it was, it wasn't going to Mass either. No, what had us eagerly anticipating Sundays was the chance to watch Vern Gagne's AWA wrestling on local television.

Half of the reason we watched was for entertainment value. The other half educational, as we were constantly looking for new ways to beat the snot out of each other. I don't recall us ever going so far as to bring a folding chair into play, but other than that our daily bouts were pretty much no-holds barred.

This was the glory days of the AWA. Names like Adrion Adonis, Nick Bockwinkel, Jumpin' Jimmy Brunzel, Crusher Jerry Blackwell, the Gagnes of course, Curt and Larry Hennig, The Crusher, Hulk Hogan (before he went big time), Ken Patera, "Mad Dog" Vachon, Jesse Ventura, Baron Von Raschke, and Buck "Rock N' Roll" Zumhofe to name just a few. Just like the wrestlers of today, these guys all needed a shtick, something to separate them from the hapless banal nobodies who would come oh so close to winning, but somehow always end up getting pinned at the end of the match.

One of the ways to differentiate yourself was to lay claim to a geographic or national identity foreign to Minnesota. Crusher Jerry Blackwell was supposedly from Stone Mountain, Georgia. Adrion Adonis and Jesse Ventura were the East-West Connection, with Adonis being from New York and Jesse from California. There was also always a rash of foreigners around to rile up the crowd. The fact that "Mad Dog" Vachon was French-Canadian certainly helped build his reputation. This being the height of the Cold War, Russians always made good villains and it the AWA always seemed to be able to find a representative from any country the US happened to having trouble with at the time.

Later in life, when we learned more about the inner-workings of the AWA, it turned that a number of these claims were dubious at best. That hated Russian from Siberia had actually lived in Mounds View most of his life. The Cuban Commando was really a third generation Nicaraguan immigrant from Hopkins who was about as Cuban as a Los Blancos Robosto.

Which is why a story in Saturday's Wall Street Journal is so fascinating. 'Sheik of Baghdad,' The Pro Wrestler, Actually Was One:

MINNETONKA, Minn. -- Adnan Alkaissy gained fame among professional-wrestling fans in the 1980s as the Sheik of Baghdad, a villainous character who entered the ring with a broad sword and belly dancers. Mr. Alkaissy became notorious during the first Gulf War as General Adnan, a character based on Saddam Hussein.

Little is what it seems in the over-the-top world of pro wrestling. But it turns out these personalities weren't so implausible for Mr. Alkaissy.

Mr. Alkaissy, 67 years old, has revealed in a newly published autobiography that he was born in Baghdad, was a childhood friend of Mr. Hussein and later played an unlikely role in helping Mr. Hussein's Baath Party consolidate power in the 1970s. Even his "sheik" title was legitimate: He inherited it from his father, a prominent Sunni spiritual leader in the 1950s, he says.

The Sheik was real? Almost restores the innocence of my youth and faith in wrestling. The Sheik was a classic AWA villain and usually very easy to hate. Except of course after that Rumsfeld meeting in '83 when he became a good guy for a while.

For years, Mr. Alkaissy says he kept quiet about what he experienced during Mr. Hussein's bloody rise to power for fear of endangering his relatives, including several brothers, who still live in the country. But with Mr. Hussein on trial in Baghdad, Mr. Alkaissy, born Adnan Bin Abdulkareem Ahmed Alkaissy Elfarthie, has broken his silence.

"I know now that Saddam used me to benefit him and the Baath Party," says Mr. Alkaissy, who wrote his autobiography with Minnesota sports author Ross Bernstein.

The Sheik of Baghdad: Tales of Celebrity and Terror from Pro Wrestling's General Adnan

[ I used to play pick-up hockey with Bernstein by the way.]

Mr. Alkaissy's standing in Iraq during the 1970s was corroborated by a half-dozen Iraqis interviewed who lived in the country at the time. Dozens of photographs from the period show Mr. Alkaissy in the ring in Baghdad, wrestling before thousands, as well as posing with Baath Party officials, including Mr. Hussein, and heads of state from other countries in the region. Mr. Hussein's legal team didn't respond to requests for comment about the wrestler's account of his relationship with the Iraqi leader.

Yeah, I imagine they've got a couple of other items on their plate right now. What with the daily death threats and client being accused of genocide and all.

Mr. Alkaissy and Mr. Hussein went to the same Baghdad junior high school in the mid-1950s, according to Mr. Alkaissy. He says he got to know the future leader by playing chess with him in neighborhood coffee houses. At the time, Baathists were fighting with Communists for control of the country.

While Mr. Hussein in his teenage years began his rise to power in the Baath party, Mr. Alkaissy left Iraq at the age of 17 on a scholarship to play football at the University of Houston, he says.

You've already got the makings for a great movie here. And it only gets better.

He later left college and began his pro wrestling career as Chief Billy White Wolf, an American Indian. He developed his own signature move involving a pincer action with his legs, dubbed the Indian death lock. During the next years, he wrestled throughout the U.S. and abroad.

An Iraqi immigrant playing an American Indian? What a country!

In 1969, he returned to Iraq to visit his family. Mr. Hussein, who had become a high-ranking official in the Baath Party, summoned his old friend for a cup of tea and suggested Mr. Alkaissy bring pro wrestling to Iraq, he says. When Mr. Alkaissy explained he was only visiting the country for a couple of months, Mr. Hussein replied, according to Mr. Alkaissy, "We are expecting you to do this as your duty to Iraq." He would stay in the country for the next nine years, he says.

Sounds like the Iraqi equivalent of an "offer you can't refuse."

The matches became major events. Mr. Alkaissy imported the fake wrestling that characterized professional wrestling in the U.S., though he claims Mr. Hussein and the rest of the country, at least in the early years, thought it was real.

I don't think this bodes well for the prospects for success of our current enterprise in Iraq. We're expecting people who couldn't figure out that pro wrestling was fake to pick up on the nuances of constitutional democracy?

For Mr. Hussein, the wrestling was more than entertainment. It diverted the people's attention from the killings that marked the Baath Party's tightening grip on power at the time. It also helped the party's image to be associated with a powerful, young wrestler who had enjoyed success abroad, Mr. Alkaissy says.

Ahmed Ferhadi, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at New York University, says when the Baath Party came to power in 1968 it was eager to appear more attractive to the Iraqi people, compared with its short-lived, bloody takeover in the early 1960s.

Mr. Alkaissy's wrestling "became the pastime of almost every Iraqi. It was riveting," says Prof. Ferhadi, who grew up in Baghdad and fled the country in 1983. When Mr. Alkaissy vanquished the French behemoth Andre the Giant, Iraqis in the stadium celebrated by shooting their guns in the air, according to Mr. Alkaissy.

Of course, Iraqis also celebrate a good morning bowel movement by squeezing off a couple of AK-47 rounds.

Mr. Alkaissy became a national hero, lauded in poetry and folk songs, according to Fawziya Abbas, a 43-year-old housewife in Baghdad. "Everybody loved him," she says. The Baath Party built him a modern, domed mansion and gave him luxury cars and a position as a director in the ministry of youth, he says. Fans appeared at his door offering goats for sacrifice.

Sounds pretty sweet, eh? The problem with popularity in a dictatorship is that it comes at a high price. Especially if that popularity attracts the attention of the Grande Jefe.

But Mr. Alkaissy says he began to fear he could suffer the fate of others whose popularity was perceived as rivaling that of Mr. Hussein. A relative in the government told him his life was at risk, he says.

Some Iraqis interviewed say Mr. Alkaissy escaped when it became known the wrestling was fake and Mr. Alkaissy, who won every match, was splitting profits with his opponents. Mr. Alkaissy acknowledges suspicions were rising within Mr. Hussein's inner circle about whether the matches were rigged.

I imagine a bunch of mustachioed Iraqis in full military regalia, deep in a hardened concrete bunker pounding a table and arguing about whether wrestling was real or fake. Somebody make this movie, please.

Mr. Alkaissy says the early matches brought in more than $1 million in revenue each. Initially he pocketed most of the money, since he was responsible for organizing them. Later, when the government realized how much Mr. Alkaissy was making, it took over the finances, Mr. Alkaissy says, giving him cars, trips and spending money.

Toward the end of 1978, Mr. Alkaissy says he stuffed a suitcase with $50,000 in cash and fled to the U.S.

Back in the U.S., Mr. Alkaissy resumed his career, this time as the Sheik of Baghdad. He wrestled with the American Wrestling Association, the main wrestling group in the U.S. at the time, through the 1980s. Mr. Alkaissy's big break came in 1990, when Mr. Hussein invaded Kuwait, triggering the Gulf War.

What do you remember about the Gulf War?

The brutal occupation of Kuwait?

The burning oil wells?

The anti-aircraft fire over Baghdad?

The "Highway of Death"?

The Shia uprising in the south?

Or the many career opportunities it provided?

Under the auspices of the World Wrestling Federation, which was becoming the dominant wrestling body in the country, Mr. Alkaissy teamed up with a wrestler named Sgt. Slaughter, a patriotic figure who dressed in fatigues. Mr. Alkaissy played a Mr. Hussein look-alike named General Adnan who, operating largely from the sidelines of the ring, "brainwashed" Sgt. Slaughter to turn against American troops.

Sounds like a definite Article 3 violation to me.

"It's quite amazing that he actually turned out to be a real sheik," says Sgt. Slaughter, whose real name is Robert Remus.

What?!? Sergeant Slaughter wasn't really a sergeant? I feel the cynicism seeping back in.

These days, Mr. Alkaissy, who has a deep tan and flowing, white hair, still appears as the Sheik in bars and casinos around the state. In recent months, he has given more than a dozen speeches around Minnesota about his life in Iraq.

His dream is to return to Iraq and put on another match in downtown Baghdad. One recent morning in the kitchen of his modest suburban home here, he sorted through black-and-white photos from his wrestling days in Iraq. Most of the officials in the photos have since been killed, he said.

His wife, Kathleen, a school lunch supervisor who met Mr. Alkaissy after watching him wrestle in the 1980s, thinks another match in Iraq would be historic.

"You should go over there and throw a show for the soldiers," she said. "Just like Bob Hope."

The Sheik making a wrestling comeback at a main event in Baghdad? Now that would make a grand ending to a most improbable story.