Hulk Hogan made me doubt whether I was 'a real American.' Sabu showed me I was.

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19-05-2025

Professional wrestling can seem like a childish artform.
All the bejeweled cowboy hats, tasseled boots and hyper-muscular men screaming violent intentions into microphones. The outlandish ring maneuvers, melodramatic storylines and occasional dance breaks.
But if you grow up consuming it, you may just never cut the cord.
At 42, I'm one of those who never outgrew wrestling, and that's why I'm hurting over the recent death of a wrestler who played a strangely important role in my ability to embrace my Arab American heritage.
Terry Brunk, a Lansing native known in the wrestling world as Sabu, died May 11 at 60, a ripe old age in pro wrestling, where drug use, concussions and other life-shortening injuries and habits are routine. He performed in his final match just last month, in a ring with barbed wire ropes, and bleeding all over the canvas one last time to entertain his fans.
The illusions of winning and losing in professional wrestling typically fade for most kids around the same time Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are exposed.
But if you keep watching, more fascinating aspects of this deceptively simple storytelling medium start to shine: the secrets of the trade, the backstage drama, the intricacies of the performances, all the improvisation, innovation and pageantry involved, and perhaps most of all, the reactions of the crowd ― and the lengths performers go to elicit them.
Sometimes, the crowds are more fun to watch than the actual matches.
And sometimes, the most rousing, fever-pitch crowd eruptions ― and the wrestlers who evoke them ― can stick with you for a lifetime.
I noticed the disinterested dad in the crowd early in the show.
He'd brought a group of very excited kids to Joe Louis Arena for a 2006 WWE event, bought them some merch and patiently watched them cheer the good guys, boo the bad guys, and at one point, tear to shreds a homemade sign paying tribute to a hero who had just turned villain.
I relished watching the family take in the show from the row right in front of me. Nosebleed seats or not, I had a front row view of these frenzied little fans and their hilariously bored, mustachioed dad, who kept glancing at his watch.
I also happened to hear the father say a few words in Arabic, which made me very curious how this family would react when a certain wrestler made his appearance toward the end of the show.
Like many 1980s kids, I learned to say my prayers and take my vitamins from Hulk Hogan, who earned our adulation by thwarting all the dastardly, anti-American villains who dared challenge him ― chief among them, the Iron Sheik.
The Iron Sheik was played by Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri, a Persian American performer who pretended to be an Arab, an evil one. He wore an Arab headdress into the ring, antagonized fans and cheated every chance he got.
His character was inspired by The Sheik, played by Ed Farhat, a Michigan wrestler and World War II veteran of Lebanese decent who used every ethnic stereotype in the book to develop a persona that enraged fans and drove his opponents to stardom.
The Sheik was known for pulling foreign objects like pencils and forks from his tights, and using them to bloody his opponents' faces behind the referees back.
He would snarl and bite and shout gibberish ― infused with a touch of Arabic ― to seem as monstrous as possible.
And he would stall, infuriating opponents and fans, sometimes praying in the ring to delay a fight, prostrating like a Muslim even though he was a Lebanese Christian.
The Sheik made a lot of wrestlers heroes. He made a lot of people rich. And he was the driving force behind Detroit's long-running Big Time Wrestling promotion company.
Then, in his later years, he trained his nephew, Brunk, who would become a wrestling legend in his own right as Sabu.
I remember, as a child, seeing a family photograph of a dignified-looking man in an Arab headdress. I asked my mother who he was. She told me it was her father, my grandfather.
At that point, the only men I'd ever seen wearing the garment were raving maniacs prone to cheating their way to victory in wrestling rings.
'Are we the bad guys?' I thought.
It was terribly disorienting. I no longer felt comfortable singing along to Hulk Hogan's theme song, 'I am a real American.' It was the first time I had to contend with the idea that maybe, despite being born here, not everyone would believe I was a real American. I still sang the song sometimes, but quietly, and I felt like an imposter.
It would be another 20 years before I could fully reconcile that awful feeling.
At the Joe in 2006, when Sabu's vaguely Arabic-sounding music hit, those kids in front of me flipped out with joy, along with the rest of the arena.
And their father, his interest finally piqued by the fever-pitch crowd reaction, unfolded his arms and craned his neck to see a larger-than-life, musclebound man in an Arab headdress making his way to the ring to resounding applause.
The father's eyes widened, he started to smile and slowly began to applaud.
I had to stifle tears of joy.
I loved Sabu. But I did not realize he'd become a mainstream fan favorite. I never imagined I'd ever see a man proudly wearing his Arab heritage cheered by a WWE crowd. Sabu had brought me full circle, embraced by fans who loved him as much as they'd hated the Iron Sheik.
Like his uncle, Sabu used negative stereotypes to his advantage. The Sheik gave him the ring name Sabu as a tribute to the Indian American actor Sabu Dastagir, who starred in films in the 1930s and 40s as an exotic, vaguely ethnic type.
Sabu the wrestler played an absurdly vicious character who often flew through the air to kick steel chairs into his opponents' faces.
But his persona was silent and more dignified than the cartoonish Sheik. To entertain his fans, Sabu sacrificed his body in ways no one had ever dreamed of. In one famous match, after legitimately breaking his jaw, he directed his manager to wrap duct tape around his head to hold the shattered bone in place, and he finished the show.
The fans adored him, and I couldn't believe it.
There's always a contingent of wrestling fans who prefer going against the grain, rooting for the villains ― 'heels,' in wrestling lingo ― to take down the heroes.
There's something exhilarating about rejecting the narrative you're expected to embrace, abandoning the 'babyfaces' — the good guys — and siding, for the moment, with fictional evil.
During the 1990s, in the waning days of Hulkamania, those fans took over. Babyface characters were booed. Heels were cheered. And show promoters were forced to scramble for new formulas.
That dynamic gave rise to an outlaw wrestling promotion based in Philadelphia known as Extreme Championship Wrestling, ECW, where standard moves like headlocks and toe holds were frowned upon, and death-defying feats of athleticism and brutality were obligatory.
Two Michigan wrestlers trained by The Sheik played central roles there: Sabu, and Battle Creek native Rob Van Dam.
They used chairs, tables, barbed wire, thumb tacks and other objects, often handed to them by fans, to do all manner of damage to each other. (At the time, 'concussion protocol' was not a well-known phrase.)
The promotion struggled to get TV exposure, but video tapes of those wild shows made their way across the country fast, and soon enough, extreme wrestling became mainstream wrestling, with Sabu, Van Dam and others making appearances in WWE.
And by then, crowds no longer cared what their heroes looked like, or whether they were playing by the rules.
It only mattered that they were badasses.
I'm still in awe when current WWE superstar Sami Zayn makes his ring entrances, sending crowds into a frenzy of song and dance.
His character is not overtly based on his Syrian Canadian heritage. But it's there, in subtle ways. An inconspicuous bit of Arabic script spelling out his name on his tights. Merch that features a Rocky Balboa-style image of him in a championship moment that reads 'Yo Khadija, I did it!' ― an homage to the fictional boxer's famous "Yo Adrian!" Zayn runs a charity that provides mobile health clinics to communities in need in Syria.
And during tours of the Middle East, the red-headed Montreal native wins over unsuspecting crowds by grabbing the microphone and addressing them directly in Arabic.
He has no need to leverage stereotypes. No need for a one-dimensional gimmick. And no need for over-the-top, bloody, concussion-inducing violence to earn his place in the spotlight.
Zayn can just be a charismatic wrestler who happens have Arab heritage, thanks to Sabu, The Sheik, the Iron Sheik and others who came before him, clearing the way for dignified stardom ― and for a 42-year-old wrestling fan to enjoy his guilty pleasure, with a little less guilt.
Khalil AlHajal is deputy editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press. Contact: [e-mail]. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters, and we may publish it online and in print.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Pro wrestler Sabu died in May, and I'm mourning the loss | Opinion