The Geeky Historian: What Happened to Foreign Heels in Wrestling?

Politics has been a part of professional wrestling for a very long time. We’ve had storylines revolving around current events ever since the late 1950s when American fans would aggressively boo Japanese wrestlers. Foreign wrestlers are often booed by American crowds because of their look or the views they’ve espoused or even just their name. However, in recent years, fans have seen a decline in the so-called “heel foreigner,” where a wrestler will say or do things that promote whoever the U.S. is fighting at the moment (Iron Sheik speaking positively about the Iranian revolution in 1979 or Sergeant Slaughter “defecting” to Iraq during the Gulf War) or just pretend to be from a country that has had a long-standing difficult relationship with the U.S. (Rusev being Russian in 2014/2015). In the past few years, we’ve see fewer bad guys in the ring getting booed based on current events and more just “I kicked your favorite guy in the balls, look how evil I am!” The following paragraphs will cover some of the best foreign heel wrestlers and also discuss potential reasons for their falling out of favor.

Let’s start at the very beginning. One of the earliest foreign heels was a man named Tojo Yamamoto. He was born in Hawaii, however he was ethnically Japanese. In the 1960s and 70s, he would wrestle in the southern United States and attendees would boo because of his identity and look. In one famous incident in Boaz, Alabama, Yamamoto spoke in broken English at first apologizing for the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1942 but then saying that he wished that the Japanese had bombed Boaz instead. This incited the desired reaction of boos. Since Pearl Harbor was still a relatively recent event and emotions were still raw, Yamamoto and wrestlers like him such as fellow Hawaiian-Japanese wrestlers Fuji and Tanaka spoke to those emotions and it was successful. Around the same time, there was a wrestler who went by the name of The Sheik, purported to be a Muslim man from Syria. In addition to serving as a pioneer of the still-prevalent “hardcore” wrestling style, The Sheik perpetually lived the life of a Muslim man despite having been born in Michigan and raised Christian. He would speak Arabic in the ring and in public, and prayed to Allah before his matches. Fans’ reaction to villains like The Sheik and others such as the villainous manager Skandor Akbar was less in reaction to a current event and perhaps more caused by our fear of the unknown.

While wrestlers like Yamamoto were using past events that nevertheless were still fresh in the minds of fans to generate heat, there was a bumper crop of prototypical Russian wrestlers who were banking on the outbreak and escalation of the Cold War. Perhaps the most famous of these was the man who ended the “Living Legend” Bruno Sammartino’s more than 2,800 day World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF, became WWF and now WWE) World Heavyweight Championship title reign, the “Russian Bear” Ivan Koloff (note that Koloff was actually Canadian and just played a Russian). Koloff’s victory over the then-undefeated Sammartino was so shocking to the crowd at Madison Square Garden (MSG) that it was met with silence rather than boos. Despite having a short championship reign, Koloff spent the remainder of his career in the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) terrorizing American heroes as part of a villainous group called The Russians, which included Nikita Koloff and Krusher Khruschev.

While the U.S. was still “feuding” with Russia, a new crisis emerged in Iran in the form of the revolution, led by Khomeini. This revolution was started when students stormed the U.S. embassy and took several people hostage. Many Iranians also took to the streets, burning American flags and denouncing the United States. Doing so right alongside them on national T.V. was a man still considered one of the greats, The Iron Sheik. Teamed with Yugoslav-born wrestler Nikolai Volkoff and the boisterous and despised “Classy” Freddie Blassie as their manager, the “Foreign Legion” became the WWF World Tag Team Champions, and one of the most hated groups in professional wrestling of the 1980s. Every match of theirs was preceded by Volkoff loudly singing the Soviet national anthem and Iron Sheik simulating spitting on the American flag as they proudly waved their own nations’ flags for all the world to see while the crowd threw garbage into the ring and booed loudly. After watching them defeat various different American patriotic groups and wrestlers throughout the decade, the fans’ hatred for the “Foreign Legion” was so intense that the Sheik and Volkoff had to check into hotels and eat at restaurants in wigs & disguises. Today, the duo are considered all-time greats by fans and wrestlers alike. But in their era, fans would be calling for their heads.

Also worth mentioning is Colonel DeBeers, a wrestler purporting to be from South Africa. He was white and was incredibly racist and xenophobic towards black wrestlers, officials, and referees. This was done in reference to the Apartheid laws of the time, which forbade black South Africans from owning property, going to decent schools, being involved in government, and voting, similar to the Jim Crow laws passed by Congress after the Civil War ended in 1865. At this point, wrestling is still territorial, and while DeBeers was wrestling in the South he was considered a heel because of the large African-American populations, other heels might be booed in one place but not in another. This is part of why heel foreigners worked so well, because no matter where they went, they would be booed because of a shared sense of American identity. This also applies to the multitude of wrestlers who all similarly expressed a love of America as opposed to a hatred; a wrestler who was patriotic would be beloved and cheered nationwide, especially during the trying times of war and conflict that we as a country have often experienced. However, this meant when one of those wrestlers “did a 180” and started playing for the other team, the reaction could be extremely volatile.

In 1991, Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded Kuwait, which brought about Operation Desert Storm, where many American soldiers fought to eject Iraqi forces. This conflict brought about devout patriotism and many people signing up for the draft or volunteering to join the Armed Forces. In the past, wrestler Sergeant Slaughter, a legitimate former Marine and drill instructor who loved the U.S. and was unwavering in this fact since the mid-80s. All of that changed when Slaughter started speaking favorably of the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait and against the U.S.’s involvement in the matter. Then, the unthinkable happened when Slaughter allied with purported Iraqi military General Adnan. Portraying a turncoat and an Iraqi sympathizer came with a price, as Slaughter began receiving legitimate death threats from fans and had to travel with a bullet-proof vest and security personnel at all times. Things went from bad to worse when, in 1991, only days after the Gulf War had begun, Slaughter won the WWF World Heavyweight Championship, and challenged the ultra-patriotic Hulk Hogan to a championship match, adding the repackaged Iron Sheik to their cause as “Colonel Mustafa” (despite Iron Sheik being Iranian and not Iraqi). The match took place at WrestleMania VII in Los Angeles, supposedly due to the venue being changed by an alleged bomb threat caused by the controversial storyline. The hatred of Slaughter reveals American patriotism in times of conflict and how invested the fans were at the time. If a similar storyline were to happen today, the venue would not receive death threats because it has become common knowledge that wrestling is written and that none of the storylines are real.

Playing on stereotypes of foreign wrestlers was not only a trait of American wrestling. In the Mexican wrestling promotion Asistencia Asesoría y Administración (AAA), future international superstar Eddie Guerrero used his American heritage to the same effect foreigners in the U.S. would. Despite being born in El Paso, Texas to Mexican-American parents and the son of Mexican wrestling legend Gory Guerrero, when Eddie’s career brought him back to his family’s motherland in the early 90s, he joined with American wrestler Art Barr to form one of the most hated groups in Mexican lucha libre, Los Gringos Locos, made up of other American-born wrestlers whose heritage became the source of the fans’ hatred of them. Even though Guerrero was part of Mexico’s most prestigious wrestling family and was trained in the country, he played off the fact that he was born and raised in America and used it to draw the ire of the fiercely devoted and patriotic Mexican fans. Conversely, when Guerrero started wrestling in the U.S., he started using his Mexican heritage as a point of getting the fans to hate him. When he joined American-promotion World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in the late 90s Eddie became a member of the Latino World Order, a faction that came about due to Latino wrestlers feeling underutilized by management. Then, when he joined the WWF in the early 2000s, Guerrero’s nickname “Latino Heat” and his early persona as a stereotypical oversexed “Latin lover” took advantage of his Mexican heritage instead of ignoring it as he did in AAA. This begs the question, is playing off your heritage in wrestling always done to draw the hatred of the fans, or simply done to stand out from your peers so the fans take more notice? In the case of one man, it was an example of the former.

In the early 1990s, a lovely Canadian man by the name of Bret “Hitman” Hart emerged in the WWF’s upper mid-card as a family friendly, all-around wholesome babyface (hero) wrestler. He had made his name previously wrestling for his father’s promotion in Calgary, Alberta, Stampede Wrestling, and then teaming with Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart in the WWF as The Hart Foundation. This changed in March of 1997 when the WWF started going through a programming change to cater to the adult fans, who were favoring wrestlers like the brazen and vulgar beer-swilling antihero “Stone Cold” Steve Austin as opposed to the family-friendly Bret Hart. At WrestleMania 13, a legendary match took place between Austin and Hart where, by the end of the match, Hart walked out a villain as Austin was the tenacious hero the crowd wanted without compromising his “attitude.” As a result of this change, Hart used his television time to tell the American crowds how Canada was better than the U.S. in every way. Joined by his brother Owen and brothers-in-law Jim Neidhart and the “British Bulldog” Davey Boy Smith, Hart formed a villainous anti-American new Hart Foundation to combat the indecency and vulgarity of the American fans who cheered for the crude Austin over the ethical Hart. However, due to the WWF’s now-international reach, the Hart Foundation were viewed as heels by the U.S. fans and babyfaces in Canada and Europe, as Hart did not want to sell out his “true fans” in Canada. This was the first time since the territory days that someone who was a babyface in one place could be a heel in another. It truly showed that Bret was versatile and good enough to be able to pull that off, but because this new image-change wasn’t brought about by any sort of international incident the reaction wasn’t universal throughout all of the WWF’s fans. However, an international incident that would rock the entire world was on the horizon, and even the wrestling world wouldn’t be unaffected by it

On September 13th, 2001, the WWF taped their secondary TV show SmackDown mere days after the Twin Towers fell. To open the show, WWF CEO Vince McMahon came out with the entire roster behind him to greet the crowd; the first gathering of people of that size since the international tragedy, and told every American in attendance and watching from home “we will not live our lives in fear”, and that “America’s heart has been wounded, but her spirit shines as a beacon of freedom that never has been and never will be taken away.” After a stirring rendition of the National Anthem from ring-announcer Lillian Garcia that brought the wrestlers and fans to tears, the WWF superstars took turns throughout the show to pay tribute to the lives lost in New York City. This tragedy allowed Vince McMahon and the WWF to show a moment of strength and solidarity to a grieving nation. However, three years later, WWF fans were reminded of what international incidents like these have always inevitably brought about in the wrestling industry. On December 13th, 2004, Italian-American wrestler Marc Copani made his WWE TV debut as an Arab-American wrestler named Muhammad Hassan, joined by his manager Khosrow (real name Shawn) Daivari. Hassan was a different sort of foreign heel because he would talk to the audience about or interrupt matches to criticize Americans for the way the media had characterized and stereotyped Arab-Americans post 9/11. Copani by no means did not live up to his gimmick. He did speak Arabic in his speeches and praised Allah before his matches, but he was also bringing up valid points about racism in America that the crowd was obviously not too pleased to hear about. Bringing up and focusing on flaws in American society is a tactic of wrestling heels even today, and Hassan was no different. However, this unsteady balance soon tipped in the direction of bad taste, as they tend to do in wrestling.

On July 4th, 2005, Hassan and five masked men, dressed in black shirts, ski-masks, and camo pants jumped and attacked fan-favorite veteran wrestler The Undertaker with clubs & piano wire and then carried him out of the ring as part of a storyline. This extremely controversial moment would only make WWE look worse when three days later, the 2005 London bus terrorist attacks took place, killing fifty-two people and injuring more than seven-hundred in coordinated suicide bombings. The backlash towards this TV moment in the wake of this tragic incident made it all the more clear that the company hoped to capitalize off post 9/11 attitudes, despite having portrayed Hassan in nearly the opposite light for months. Perhaps believing that he wasn’t garnering enough heat (negative fan reaction) as he was and they needed to add more fuel to the anti-Arab fire. But that fire quickly grew out of control and WWE needed emergency damage control badly. After the storyline elicited national attention from major media outlets, the segment was either edited or completely removed from international releases of Smackdown while the television network pressured WWE to keep the Muhammad Hassan character off of TV. After Hassan was handily defeated by The Undertaker in the resulting PPV match later that month, he was very quickly written off WWE TV completely and released from the company in September 2005. The international backlash forced WWE to completely alter their storyline plans, brought them copious amounts of negative press and essentially ended Copani’s wrestling career. Had this storyline been done similarly in the 1980s or 90s before WWE became publically traded, would this kind of content simply put “heat” on the wrestler rather than the entire company the same way it did wrestlers like the Iron Sheik or Tojo Yamamoto? Or was the 9/11 tragedy so significant and the xenophobia towards Arab-Americans so great that something like this could never have worked?

Many wrestlers have played the “foreign heel” gimmick since the mid-2000s, however none have had the same effect that previous foreign heels had. Wrestlers like The Great Khali, Russian duo Rusev & Lana, and Jinder Mahal have all spoken about their love for their respective countries of origin, but none have gotten the same level of hatred that previous wrestlers enjoyed. Why is that? It could be because of WWE’s PG rating, it could also be because of the new PC era in politics. If it was indeed WWE’s PG rating, then a particularly infamous moment at The Greatest Royal Rumble PPV in Saudi Arabia would not have occurred. At the show, Iranian-American wrestlers Ariya and Shawn Daivari came out after WWE introduced their new Saudi trainees, waving the Iranian flag, and they were subsequently booed and even received death threats after the show. Ariya Davairi went on Twitter afterwards to make it clear that he was playing a fictitious character. Had this happened in an earlier decade, the Davairi brothers could have used this to gain significant heat, but they chose not to. That decision is likely based on the fact that WWE has a new business deal with the Saudis and did not want to upset the fans too much. There is also the fact that fans are smarter to the business now than they were in the 1970s and 80s, and thus cannot be fooled by the “foreign heel” gimmick, especially if the man behind the wrestler is not actually a foreigner. Because information about wrestlers’ real lives is so readily available online, it’s harder to be as invested in a wrestler’s persona. This is particularly seen in the case of the duo of Rusev and Lana. Rusev was a Bulgarian man playing a Russian, and Lana was an American raised in the former Soviet Union. Because fans were aware that Rusev was Bulgarian and that Lana was American, it was harder to see them as true evil foreigners because the fans were aware that it was all an act. It was also seen when WWE tried to push wrestler Jinder Mahal as an evil foreigner, who was purported to be Punjabi when in fact he is a Canadian man of Indian descent. Because the fans knew about Mahal’s true roots, it was not as in vogue to boo him because of his heritage, but rather because the fans did not think he deserved the WWE Championship when he won it from Randy Orton in 2017.

Smart fans (or Smart Marks, a term used to refer to wrestling fans, and shortened to Smark) have brought both good things (like more cheers for debuting wrestlers from the independent scene) and bad things (aggressively booing people they see as less deserving of this or that title) to the business. It is undeniably part of why the heel foreigner has fallen out of fashion, as smarks will boo just about anyone they don’t like, even if they are supposed to like them (see, Roman Reigns). If anyone on the current WWE roster tried to use their foreignness to generate heat, they would likely not be booed for it, but rather booed on the basis of their past wrestling career, or on their tactics in matches as opposed to their speeches. Heels have used dirty tactics to win since the dawn of professional wrestling as sports entertainment, and now in the age of smarks, it’s more why they get booed. An example of this would be Japanese wrestler Shinsuke Nakamura. In 2018, he had a match against fan-favorite A.J. Styles for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 34 and low-blowed him after coming up short in the match. In subsequent weeks, Nakamura would try to get out of backstage interviews by saying, “no speak English.” The fans continued to boo Nakamura not because he’s a Japanese wrestler who can’t speak English, but rather because he kicked A.J. Styles below the belt. This feeds into the belief that smarks won’t boo a wrestler because of his or her heritage anymore. Eventually, even wrestlers like Rusev and The Great Khali naturally transitioned into fan-favorites. Through any number of the aforementioned factors, basing your entire heel persona on your ethnicity or your race simply does not work anymore.

While there have been many foreign heels, there have also been foreign babyfaces. The “Living Legend” Bruno Sammartino was born and raised in Italy during World War II, and it was his Italian heritage that appealed him to the predominantly Italian-American New York City crowd. Later WWF World Heavyweight Champions such as Pedro Morales and Hulk Hogan did the same for Latino and Irish immigrants. “The British Bulldog” Davey Boy Smith famously won the WWF Intercontinental Championship at Wembley Stadium in London to an enormous ovation, and there are numerous other examples of foreign wrestlers who were mythic figures to both their home countries and the rest of the world. The legendary André the Giant, born in a small town in France, was viewed as a larger than life icon no matter where he wrestled. Even to this day, a wrestler’s heritage can appeal them to a much larger base of fans. One example is current WWE superstar Adeel Alam. During the first six years of his career starting in 2003, Pakistani-American Alam began wrestling under a mask to avoid being discriminated against. When this choice began affecting his ability to get booked, Ali rechristened himself “Prince Mustafa Ali”, playing a stereotypical Arab-American heel. While this did increase his booking prospects, Alam decided he couldn’t continue negatively portraying his culture and people just for the sake of work. So he dropped the “Prince” from his name and, taking after Bret Hart, began wrestling as “Mustafa Ali”, a babyface character more true to his own personality which eventually got him to WWE. The Internet era of wrestling where one’s hatred for a particular wrestler almost solely rests on their character work or their in-ring ability has almost all but eliminated the need for the traditional “evil foreigner” archetype. The days of Yamamotos, Iron Sheiks and Muhammad Hassans are all but over. The ascent of Mustafa Ali from a stereotypical Arab-American heel to a babyface superstar is proof in the pudding. American wrestling fans in today’s day and age are far more prepared to support a foreign immigrant wrestler than they are to hate them.