Welcome to the deep dive. OK, let's just unpack
this right away, because what we are looking
at today isn't just a sports story, and it certainly
isn't just a wrestling story. It's a profound,
really layered human interest story. We're looking
at a man who spent you know, the vast majority
of his adult life on national television. Performing
in front of millions of people. Exactly. Millions
of screaming people. Yet somehow he managed to
remain almost entirely hidden. Today we are diving
into the life, the career, and the really intense
private struggles of a man known to the world
as Iron Mike Sharp. And what's truly fascinating
here, at least to me, is the absolute dichotomy
between the character you saw in the ring and
the man who existed back in the locker room.
Oh, absolutely. It's night and day. It really
is. When you go through the massive stack of
sources we've gathered for this deep dive, the
encyclopedia entries, the historical championing
lineages from the old regional territories, and
especially the biographical anecdotes. Memoirs.
Right. The memoirs pulled directly from wrestling
legends. Guys of the Dynamite Kid, Hulk Hogan,
announcer Gary Michael Capetta and Gorilla Monsoon.
A very complex picture starts to emerge from
all of that. We are looking at a performer whose
public persona was just entirely defined by loud,
aggressive, chaotic energy. I mean, he was a
screaming brute. But his private life was governed
by a vulnerable, almost paralyzing need for order
and cleanliness. And that contrast is exactly
what we're going to explore with you today. Because
if you happen to be a casual fan who, say, watched
wrestling on Saturday mornings in the 1980s or
90s, you probably have a very specific memory
of Mike Sharp. You remember him as a background
player. Exactly. The industry term for it is
a jobber. He was the giant screaming guy in the
ring whose entire job was to lose. He lost to
the rising stars to make them look good. Right.
But looking through these documents we have,
the narrative that he was just a career loser
is completely shattered. He carried a massive
historic family legacy. He held multiple regional
championships. He was widely respected as an
absolute master mechanic in the ring. Yes, he
was. And he did all of this while fighting a
severe daily battle with obsessive compulsive
disorder. And he did it in what had to be one
of the most chaotic, unhygienic work environments
imaginable. It really forces a complete reevaluation
of how we view the supporting cast in any form
of entertainment. Yeah. I think to truly understand
the psychology of Mike Sharp, And to understand
why he embraced the specific role he played for
so long, we really have to go all the way back
to the beginning. Let's do it. Because his path
into the squared circle was anything but typical,
especially when you look at the family tree he
was born into. So walk me through that early
landscape. The Knights here mention he was born
Michael Sharp on October 28, 1951 in Hamilton,
Ontario, but he actually grew up in California.
He did. And then he eventually moved back to
Canada as a teenager. That is a lot of geographical
bouncing around for a kid. But the most critical
piece of the puzzle seems to be his lineage.
His father and his uncle were already in the
business, right? They weren't just in the business.
They were royalty. Oh, yeah. His father, Mike
Sharp Sr., and his uncle, Ben Sharp, were a massively
successful tag team in the 1950s. To give you
some context on what that actually means, the
1950s was the golden age of television wrestling.
Because of the post -war boom? Exactly. The post
-war economic boom meant families were buying
televisions for the very first time. And professional
wrestling was one of the very first programs
broadcast just to test the networks. The Sharp
brothers were pioneers of that specific era.
Wow. They were huge athletic men. And they were
recognized as champions everywhere, from the
bustling territory of San Francisco all the way
over to Japan. I saw that in the notes, the Japan
tours. Their tours of Japan are legendary. They
wrestled with Godozan, who is essentially the
godfather of Japanese professional wrestling.
And they did it in front of crowds that brought
the entire country to. I'm just trying to put
myself in the shoes of a kid growing up with
that shadow over him. Your father and your uncle
are quite literally international superstars.
Pioneers of a global industry. Right. Your last
name is practically synonymous with the sport
on two different continents. The expectation
for you to follow in their footsteps must have
been suffocating. And especially considering
his physical size. Oh yeah. He eventually grew
to be six feet four inches tall, weighing around
283 pounds. He was built like a tank. With that
bloodline and that physique you would just assume
he was practically born in a wrestling ring That's
the logical assumption and I think it's what
makes his actual timeline. So intriguing despite
the pedigree Despite the massive physical frame,
he didn't rush into the family business. In high
school, he focused his energy entirely elsewhere.
On doxxing and weightlifting? Yes. He dabbled
heavily in combat sports and lifting. He was
clearly drawn to physical exertion, but he actively
avoided the specific theater of professional
wrestling for a very long time. He didn't actually
start training for the ring until he was 25 years
old. 25. That is a fascinating detail. Think
about that for a second. I want you to think
about a time in your own life when you pivoted
your path to follow a family expectation or to
take up a legacy. But you did it much later than
anyone expected. It's rare. Very rare. In the
sports world, starting a highly physical specialized
career at 25 is incredibly late. Today, you see
athletes entering development centers in their
early teens. Why the delay? Was it fear of the
legacy or something else entirely? It's a matter
of intense psychological speculation. Waiting
until 25 suggests a significant period of hesitation.
Perhaps he needed to establish his own physical
identity first. That makes sense. By getting
into boxing and competitive weightlifting, he
was proving to himself that he was a legitimate
athlete on his own terms. Outside the predetermined
world his father and uncle dominated, there's
also the reality of his underlying mental health,
which we will explore deeply later. The OCD.
Right. Wrestling is a lifestyle of utter chaos.
Even as a young man, you might have recognized
on some level that the sheer unpredictability
of the wrestling circuit clashed with his innate
need for structure. Weightlifting, by contrast,
is entirely structured. It's rigid. Exactly.
You control the weight. You control the reps.
You control the environment. You lift the bar.
You put it down. It is predictable. But eventually,
the gravitational pull of the family business
was just too strong. The notes say he was trained
by a guy named Dewey Robertson and made his official
debut in 1973. And we should touch on those early
geographic shifts too. Yeah, bouncing from the
industrial grit of Hamilton, Ontario out to the
sun -soaked culture of 1960s California and then
back again. I have to imagine that navigating
those wildly different environments as a kid
helped shape his ability to adapt because adaptability
ends up being the defining characteristic of
his entire professional life. Completely. The
hallmark of a great traveling professional wrestler
in that era was the ability to read a room. You
had to understand the specific cultural psychology
of the audience you were performing for on any
given night. A crowd in Vancouver reacts very
differently to violence than a crowd in New Orleans.
Precisely. Experiencing that kind of cultural
whiplash as a youth essentially trained him to
be a chameleon. And when he finally did enter
the business, he utilized that adaptability immediately.
Because the man the world remembers as a career
loser on WWF television did not start at the
bottom. This is where the story gets really incredible.
Before he ever put on the black arm brace, before
he ever stepped foot in a WWF ring, Mike Sharp
was a heavily decorated regional powerhouse.
He was a star. For a solid decade, from 1973
to 1983, he was collecting championships. I'm
looking at the data from Gene Kaniski's NWA All
-Star Wrestling territory up in Vancouver. He
absolutely cleaned up there. He really did. He
was a two -time NWA Canadian tag team champion,
and he won the Pacific Coast heavyweight title.
Can you explain how the territory system worked
back then? Because I don't think modern fans
understand what a big deal it was to be a champion
in Vancouver. That is vital context. For you
listening who only knows the modern globalized
version of sports entertainment, you have to
understand that in the 1970s, the wrestling landscape
was fractured. Right. It was structured almost
like a series of distinct mafia families ruling
over different geographic regions. The National
Wrestling Alliance, the NWA, was the governing
body that theoretically kept the peace between
all these regional promoters. So you had a territory
in Florida, a territory in Texas, a territory
in the Pacific Northwest, and so on. Exactly.
They didn't compete on national television. They
just dominated their local markets. So being
the champion of Vancouver meant you were the
absolute king of that specific fiefdom. Precisely.
The promoter of that territory, Gene Koniski
in this case, relied on his champion to draw
money. If the champion wasn't compelling, The
local fans didn't buy tickets to the arena, and
the promoter went out of business. It's a high
stakes game. Very high stakes. They did not put
championship belts on guys who couldn't perform.
So for Mike Sharp to hold the Pacific Coast Heavyweight
title meant he was the financial anchor of that
entire region. And we shouldn't gloss over the
tag team titles he won there either. He won them
with two completely different partners, Moose
Moravsky and Salvatore Bellomo. Which is huge.
Right. In the mechanics of the wrestling business,
winning tag titles with different partners proves
immense versatility. It shows you aren't being
hidden or carried by a single established tag
team dynamic. It means Mike Sharp was the common
denominator of success. He was the glue holding
those matches together. But his success wasn't
just limited to the Pacific Northwest. He eventually
moved down to the American South, working for
Mid -South Wrestling in Louisiana. And according
to the historical records here, He wasn't just
a champion down there. He was a massive fan favorite.
A baby face, as the industry calls it. Right.
He won the Mid -South Louisiana championship
twice, the Mississippi title twice. And then
there is this one specific detail that really
jumped out at me. In 1979, he won a Brass Nux
title. What exactly is a Brass Nux championship?
The Brass Knuckles Championship is one of the
most fascinating artifacts of the territory days.
Before the term hardcore wrestling even existed,
before the era of chairs and tables and barbed
wire, there was the Brass Knucks title. Sounds
violent. It was a championship specifically designed
to be defended in wild, bloody brawls. The matches
were billed as unsanctioned street fights. So
it's not about technical holds or pinning someone's
shoulders to the mat, it's about surviving a
fist fight. Exactly. And the psychology behind
it is crucial. A promoter only gives a brass
knucks belt to someone the audience genuinely
believes is one of the toughest, most rugged,
most dangerous men on the entire roster. So you
have to be believable. Highly believable. It
requires an entirely different style of performance
than a traditional wrestling match. It requires
throwing incredibly realistic punches, taking
immense physical punishment, and usually bleeding
heavily to sell the violence of the fight to
the crowd. So now look at the portfolio he's
built. We have evidence that Mike Sharp was a
smooth technical champion in Vancouver, a highly
adaptable tag team specialist, and a certified
blood and guts brawler in the Deep South. The
resume is practically flawless at this point.
And the regional success tour continues into
the 1980s. From 1980 to 1981, he heads up to
Calgary, Alberta to work for Stampede Wrestling.
Now even casual fans have usually heard of Stampede.
The Hart family. Exactly. That is the promotion
run by the legendary Hart family. Stu Hart, Bret
Hart, Owen Hart. It was notorious for being one
of the most physically grueling, technically
demanding territories in the world. Without a
doubt. While he was there, he teamed up with
Duke Myers and won the Stampede International
Tag Team Championship. And if you look at the
historical lineages provided in our source material,
the names he shares that specific title history
with are just staggering. It is a veritable who's
who of wrestling royalty. Stampede wrestling
was famous for the Denjun. The basement were
stewheart trained wrestlers using painful, legitimate
submission holds. To survive in Stampede, you
had to be incredibly tough and incredibly precise.
You couldn't fake it there. Not at all. If you
look at the men who held those Stampede tag titles
in that era, you see names like the Von Steigers,
the Wild Samoans, Mr. Hito and the legendary
Dynoid Kid. The Dynamite Kid is widely considered
one of the most innovative, intense, in -ring
performers of the 20th century. To be booked
to hold the exact same championship as those
individuals means the promoters, the notoriously
strict Hart family, viewed Mike Sharp as an elite
top -tier talent. He was a peer to legends. He
was a draw. He was a hero to the fans in Mid
-South, a champion in Canada, a respected brawler
in the mud shows. He had the pedigree, the size
and the proven track record. But then we hit
February of 1983 and this is the pivot point.
This is where everything changes. Mike Sharp
enters the World Wrestling Federation, the WWF,
a company owned by Vince McMahon, which is just
on the cusp of launching its massive national
expansion. Sharp enters the WWF and he ends up
staying there for over a decade. until 1995.
This is where the character that the world remembers
is born. This is the critical juncture of his
entire career trajectory. When he arrives in
the WWF, he adopts a new moniker. He starts calling
himself Canada's greatest athlete. Such a great,
arrogant villain name. Now, as a fun piece of
trivia, he actually borrowed that nickname from
his former boss in Vancouver, Gene Koniski. But
it's not the nickname that makes him famous.
It is the physical affectations, the deliberate
theatrical choices he makes to build this new
character. Oh, the gimmick is masterful. First
of all, there is the auditory element. He is
characterized by this near constant yelling and
grunting throughout its matches. His endless.
Endless aggressive guttural noise echoing through
the arena from the exact moment the bell rings.
And then there's the visual element, the accessory.
He wears a thick black leather forearm brace
on his right arm. Right. The storyline explanation
was that he was supposedly protecting a lingering
injury, but it was widely believed by the audience
and heavily, heavily implied by the television
commentators that the brace actually concealed
a heavy loaded foreign object, like a piece of
metal or a roll of cord. The brilliance of that
gimmick simply cannot be overstated. From a theatrical
standpoint, the constant screaming and that mysterious
black brace are masterful, simple tools to draw
the ire of the crowd. It's instant. In wrestling
terminology, that negative crowd reaction is
called heat. The psychology of the foreign object
trope is deeply ingrained in the history of the
sport. It is brilliant because it requires absolutely
zero exposition. You don't need a commentator
to explain a complex backstory. Precisely. The
moment Mike Sharp steps through the curtain,
wearing a scowl and rubbing that thick black
leather brace, even the person sitting in the
very last row of the arena instantly understands
the narrative. This man is a villain. He is a
cheater, he has a weapon, and he is a direct
threat to the hero of the match. It bypasses
logic and hits the audience right in their sense
of primal fairness. It's visual storytelling
at its absolute finest. And initially, the WWF
really pushed him as a legitimate threat to their
top stars. He wasn't brought in to be a loser.
No, not at first. He was managed by the infamous
Captain Lou Albano, who was the premier villainous
manager of the era. He was regularly featured
on television, destroying lesser opponents by
smashing them in the face with that loaded forearm.
And this initial monster push culminated on April
30th, 1983. A huge date. Mike Sharpe was booked
to challenge the world heavyweight champion Bob
Backlund at the Philadelphia Spectrum. We really
need to pause and recognize the magnitude of
that date. April 30th, 1983, represents the absolute
apex of his national career. Main eventing the
Philadelphia Spectrum against the World Heavyweight
Champion is as high as the mountain goes in this
industry. It doesn't get bigger. The Spectrum
was one of the most important, raucous buildings
in the entire wrestling world. The Philadelphia
crowds were notoriously tough. Bob Backlund was
the ultimate clean -cut, collegiate amateur wrestling
hero. Sharp was the screaming foreign invader
with a weapon on his arm. It was a perfect clash
of styles. But as history shows, Mike Sharp lost
that match. And losing that match dictates the
rest of his career, doesn't it? Let me ask you
this, because this is where the psychology of
the business is so strange to outsiders. If he's
this incredibly talented guy, a former champion
everywhere else, why does losing one match to
the world champion suddenly demote him? Why didn't
he just climb back up the ranks? Because of the
strict, almost formulaic reality of the wrestling
business during a national expansion. When you
are brought into a territory specifically to
challenge the champion, your entire purpose is
to be a credible monster for the hero to vanquish.
Oh, I see. Once the hero slays the dragon, the
dragon loses its aura of invincibility. Unless
you are the absolute top star of the era, your
role fundamentally shifts. Shart had served his
narrative purpose. He proved that Backland could
overcome a massive cheating brute. And after
that, he was shuffled down the court. Exactly.
He never reached those main event heights in
the WWF again. In fact, the sources point out
an incredible statistic. Despite his immense
talent and his 12 -year tenure, Mike Sharp never
held a single championship during his entire
run in the WWF. And so post -1983, we watched
the anatomy of a professional jobber begin to
take shape. Sharp transitioned into the guy on
the television tapings whose primary job was
to lose. Whenever a new muscular hero was signed
to the company, Mike Sharp was the first guy
they put him in the ring with. He became the
ultimate stepping stone. If you analyze the structure
of any epic narrative, whether it's professional
wrestling, a comic book, or a Greek myth, every
production needs a reliable antagonist. The hero
cannot look heroic if the obstacle they are facing
is incredible. If Superman only fights bank robbers,
Superman doesn't look very impressive. Mike Sharp
with his massive size, his legitimate family
pedigree, his technical skill, and that instantly
recognizable black brace became the perfect reliable
obstacle. It takes an unbelievable amount of
professional respect to be put in that position.
I want you to relate this to your own life and
your own career for a second. Think about your
workplace. Think about the corporate hierarchy.
Who are the people in your organization whose
primary role is to set others up for success?
The unsung heroes. The people who do the heavy
lifting behind the scenes, ensuring the presentation
goes smoothly, training the new hires, stabilizing
the chaotic projects, often without getting the
glory, the bonus, or the promotion themselves.
That was Mike Sharp in the WWF. It takes immense
physical skill to protect your opponent, dictate
the pace of the match, ensure nobody gets injured,
and make the audience truly believe that the
rising star is a world beater. It also requires
a profound, almost superhuman lack of ego. In
a business driven entirely by narcissism, vanity,
and the spotlight, to willingly go out to the
ring night after night, take the physical punishment,
stare at the lights, and ensure the other guy
looks like a million dollars is an incredibly
rare trait. It has to be. It's why he lasted
in the WWF from 1983 all the way to 1995. You
do not survive 12 years in the biggest most ruthlessly
competitive wrestling company in the world just
by being a warm body. You survive by being absolutely
indispensable to the machinery of the show. And
the crazy thing is, even though his television
role was always to lose, the guys in the back
knew exactly how good he was. The sources note
that he actually chalked up quite a few untelevised
victories between 1984 and 1988 at the live events,
the non -televised shows, known as house shows.
Plus, whenever management had a uniquely delicate
or high -profile situation, they called Mike
Sharp. In 1984, he appeared on Piper's Pit, hosted
by Roddy Piper, which was the hottest, most unpredictable
interview segment on television. In 1987, he
was chosen to provide the opposition for Ivan
Pritzky's major comeback match at Madison Square
Garden. This is a huge deal. And in 1988, he
actually reached the second round of the prestigious
King of the Ring tournament by pinning Boris
Zhukov. Being chosen for Ivan Pritzky's comeback
match at Madison Square Garden is a massive vote
of confidence from Vince McMahon and the manage...
Putsky was an older, highly popular star returning
after a long absence. He was likely dealing with
ring rust. He needed to be protected. Precisely.
Management needed someone in the ring with him
who was completely safe, who could physically
guide the match, take all of Putsky's signature
offense perfectly, cover up any mistakes, and
deliver a performance that would send the notoriously
critical New York crowd home happy. You don't
put a rookie in that spot. You put your ultimate
trusted mechanic in that spot. Okay, I have to
bring up my absolute favorite piece of trivia
from this entire stack of research, because it
perfectly illustrates how bizarre this industry
is. In early 1984, while he is a jobber on American
television, Mike Sharp does a tour of Japan for
New Japan Pro Wrestling. And who is his tag team
partner over there? Hulk Hogan. But not the Hulk
Hogan we know. They are tagging together as heels.
bad guys. The contradiction there is just staggering.
It actually hurts the brain to think about. In
early 1984, Hulk Hogan is the ultimate untouchable,
vitamin eating American hero in the United States.
He's a pop culture icon. He is the face of the
WWF's massive national expansion. But the wrestling
business is fluid and geography dictates reality.
In Japan, the cultural psychology is entirely
different. Hogan was portrayed there as a massive,
villainous foreign invader, a gauging heel. Incredible.
So you have Hogan, the biggest star in the world,
and Sharpie, the guy losing on Saturday morning
television in America, teaming up as equals to
terrorize the Japanese fan favorites. It really
highlights the illusionary nature of the business.
You can be the biggest hero in the world in New
York and a hated, rule -breaking villain in Tokyo.
And Mike Sharp was skilled enough and versatile
enough to bridge that gap and stand shoulder
to shoulder with Hogan. And his crossover didn't
even stop in Japan. During late 1984 and early
1985, he's also taking bookings down in Memphis
for the Continental Wrestling Association. And
what happens? He wins the NWA Mid -America Heavyweight
Championship. Let's look at the source data on
that title lineage. Yes, this is a championship
previously held by Harley Race, Jerry the King
Lawler, Buddy Rogers, Tommy Rich, and Randy Savage.
Let that sink in. Mike Sharp, the screaming guy
in the black arm brace who always lost on WWF
programming, held the exact same piece of gold
as macho man Randy Savage. completely reinforces
the point that his jobber status in the WWF was
a specific casting choice by a specific director,
not a reflection of his actual talent level.
Vince McMahon cast him as the antagonist. But
in other territories where work rate, toughness,
and pure wrestling ability were prioritized differently
by the promoters, he was easily slotted right
back into the championship picture. He could
do it all. Even the WWF recognized his versatility.
The sources mentioned he actually had a brief
run as a fan favorite, a baby face, and late
1988, getting televised wins over other notorious
jobbers like Steve Lombardi and Barry Horowitz.
The crowd loved it because they recognized his
underlying talent. He truly was the king of the
jobbers. But now we have to pull back the curtain
on the man himself, because everything we've
talked about so far, the shouting, the brawling,
the brutal travel schedule, the championships,
the black arm brace that was the public facing
Iron Mike. The private reality of Michael Sharp
was vastly, tragically different. This brings
us to the emotional and psychological core of
our deep dive. According to multiple memoirs
written by his peers, including the dynamite
kid, Hulk Hogan, announcer Gary Michael Capetta,
and the legendary commentator, gorilla monsoon,
Mike Sharp, exhibited severe debilitating characteristics
of obsessive compulsive disorder, OCD. In the
locker room behind closed doors, he earned a
nickname. They called him Mr. Clean. And the
details provided in these books are heartbreaking
when you really sit down and process them. He
wasn't just neat. He was preoccupied with cleanliness
to the point where he would spend hours, literally
hours, washing his hands or standing in the showers
at the arenas. It's an overwhelming compulsion.
He would meticulously fold, unfold, and refold
his clothing over and over again, trapped in
a loop, unable to stop until it felt perfectly
right. This raises a vital point about how neurodivergence
and severe mental health struggles were viewed
in the 1980s, particularly in the hyper -masculine
world of professional sports. The vocabulary
simply didn't exist in that locker room. No,
not at all. In that incredibly demanding, testosterone
-fueled environment, these debilitating compulsions
were often brushed off as mere quirks. He wasn't
recognized as a man suffering from a recognized,
treatable mental health condition. He was just
given a nickname, Mr. Clean. and treated as an
eccentric oddity by his peers. I want to really
paint a picture of what that means. Imagine the
pure agony of that existence. Professional wrestling
in the 1980s meant an absolutely grueling travel
schedule. You were working 300 days a year. On
the road, constantly. You were in a different
city every single night. You were crammed into
tiny rental cars with three other massive, sweating,
bleeding guys. You were wrestling in grimy, un
-air -conditioned arenas built in the 1920s.
You were rolling around on canvas ring mats covered
in the sweat, blood and saliva of 30 other men.
Medical standards and hygiene were an afterthought.
For a man suffering from a severe compulsive
need for cleanliness and order, that environment
must have felt like a waking, inescapable nightmare.
Every single day of his career was a psychological
battle just to exist in that space. The immense
mental strength that must have taken to endure
that environment while also performing highly
dangerous, physically demanding matches is almost
unimaginable. His compulsions were so severe
that they directly negatively interfered with
his life. The source material highlights a very
famous anecdote from a televised house show at
the Boston Garden in March of 1986. The Boston
Garden story, this is the one that really encapsulates
the tragedy. During the broadcast, Gorilla Monsoon
is on commentary and he jokes to his fellow commentator
Lord Alfred Hayes about an incident that happened
at a previous Boston event. Monsoon casually
says on the air that Sharp had wrestled the very
first match of the night. The opener. But hours
later, when the entire event was completely over,
the fans had gone home, the ring crew had packed
up, and the building staff locked up the arena
for the night. Sharp was still in the showers.
He ended up being locked in and forced to sleep
on the floor of the empty Boston garden. And
we have to look at the context of that. On television,
Monsoon played it for laughs. He delivered it
like a sitcom punchline. It was just a funny
story about wacky Iron Mike taking a long shower.
But if we analyze what is actually happening
in that building, it underscores the paralyzing
severity of his condition. The Boston Garden
was a massive, old, drafty, uncomfortable building.
He was trapped in the shower by his own mind
for hours, unable to leave, unable to break the
cycle of washing, to the point where he was completely
abandoned by his colleagues and locked in an
empty, dark building overnight. That is not a
humorous quirk. That is a man being held hostage
by his own brain chemistry. It's devastating.
And there is a theory that I've seen wrestling
historians float, which connects his OCD directly
to his on -screen character. Think about the
black leather forearm brace. Yes, it was a great
prop for a bad guy to use as a weapon, but from
a psychological standpoint, it was a thick physical
barrier between his skin and the sweat and grime
of his opponents. It was armor. It was armor
and his constant screaming, a release valve for
the immense internal pressure he was under. And
it wasn't just cleanliness either. The sources
note that commentators frequently pointed out
his absolute obsession with physical fitness.
The running joke backstage was that if Mike Sharp
wasn't in the ring or in the shower, he was lifting
weights. Always working out. His entire life
was a rigid compulsive routine of maintaining
his body and cleaning his body. That was his
armor against the chaos of the wrestling world.
You've hit on the psychological core of the issue.
His body was the one thing he could exert total
absolute control over. In a business where promoters
dictate your wins, your losses, your travel schedule,
your pay and your public perception, his physical
fitness and his cleanliness were the domains
where his OCD could manifest as absolute control.
Because he couldn't control the booking. Exactly.
He couldn't control if he won or lost to Bob
Backlund, but he could control exactly how many
times he folded his shirt and exactly how many
weights he lifted. So let's look at the final
chapter of his career in his life, because that
desperate need for physical control makes what
happens next feel incredibly cruel. His last
televised match for the WWF was on June 6, 1995.
He teamed up with Dwayne Gill, who was another
famous dropper of that era, and they lost a tag
team match to the Smoking Guns. That was the
end of his national television run. But after
leaving the WWF, he didn't just walk away from
the business. Wrestling was all he knew. He spent
from 1995 to 1997 working the independent circuit.
These are smaller shows, often in high school
gyms or armories. With indies. And even there,
he was still wrestling notable names who were
also on the downside of their careers. The record
show matches against Nikolai Volkov, Virgil,
Bam Bam Bigelow, King Kong Bundy. His very last
recorded match took place on November 15th, 1997,
against the legendary George the Animal Steal.
After the final bell rang on his in -ring career,
he transitioned into teaching. He opened Mike
Sharp's School of Pro Wrestling down in New Jersey,
and by all accounts, he was an incredibly effective
teacher. He trained some very notable talent
who went on to have great careers themselves.
Guys like Mike Bucci, who became Nova in ECW,
Crowbar in WCW, and specifically, the Haas brothers,
Charlie and Russ Haas. The transition to teaching
makes perfect psychological sense when you view
it through the lens of his personality. He was
passing on the fundamentals that made him such
a safe, reliable and trusted worker for all those
years in the WWF. If you look at the wrestlers
he trained, particularly the Haas brothers, they
are renowned in the industry for their crisp
technical proficiency, their amateur style grappling,
and above all, their safety in the ring. Mike
Sharp instilled the strict mechanical rules of
the craft into the next generation. A man who
needed order in his own life thrived in an environment
where he could dictate the order and structure
for his students. But then we get to the health
decline, and it is just devastating. In 2007,
he moved back to his hometown of Hamilton, Ontario.
He moved back to live with and care for his aging
mother. During that summer, he was doing some
routine landscaping work outside the house and
suffered a deep cut to his leg. Now, normally
that's just a trip to the clinic for some stitches.
But that cut became severely infected. And here's
the tragic irony. For a man whose entire identity,
whose entire livelihood, and whose primary psychological
coping mechanism was tied to his physical fitness
and bodily maintenance, a severe physical infection
is a catastrophic blow. Everything he worked
to protect. Exactly. The infection ravaged his
leg and led to profound permanent mobility issues.
This giant of a man, this 280 -pound powerhouse
who spent his life lifting weights to maintain
control, began using a wheelchair. He ended up
living in a basement apartment in Hamilton, and
according to the sources, he became a complete
recluse. Other health problems likely exacerbated
by his immobility and isolation compounded over
the years. A man who spent his life performing
for millions of screaming fans, traveling the
globe, sharing the ring with icons like Hulk
Hogan and Bob Backlund, was now physically trapped
in a basement isolated from the world. It forces
us to reflect on a very uncomfortable reality
about the sports and entertainment industries.
How does the industry take care of its veterans?
Here is a man who spent decades sacrificing his
body to make others look like superstars. He
built a foundation. He took the bumps. He absorbed
the impacts. He was the foundational machinery
that allowed a billion -dollar industry to function
and expand globally. Yet, in his twilight years,
battling severe physical decline and lifelong
mental health issues, he's entirely hidden away,
largely forgotten by the machine he helped build.
It wasn't until 2015 that he finally allowed
a video camera to record him, and that was solely
because he wanted to participate in a video tribute
to another Hamilton wrestling legend, Angelo
Mosca Sr. That brief, grainy video was his final
public appearance. Iron Mike Sharp passed away
on January 17th, 2016 in Hamilton at the age
of 64. It's a deeply somber conclusion to a life
that was lived so loudly, so aggressively in
public, yet so quietly and painfully in reality.
So what does this all mean for us? We have a
man who was literally born into wrestling royalty,
carrying the weight of a legendary 1950s tag
team on his back. A man who won championships
all over North America, surviving bloody brass
knucks, brawls and the grueling stampede dungeon.
An incredible resume. A man who created one of
the most recognizable iconic villain personas
of the 1980s just by grunting and wearing a black
arm brace. He gave his body to entertain millions,
he patiently trained the next generation of athletes,
but he spent his entire career fighting a quiet,
intense, debilitating battle with severe OCD
and spent his final years completely hidden away
from the world he helped build. His legacy is
incredibly complex and deserves profound respect.
Mike Sharp was not just a guy who lost on Saturday
mornings. He was a master craftsman. He was a
survivor in an unforgiving, chaotic era of sports
entertainment. And his story demands that we
reevaluate how we remember the supporting casts
in any era of history, recognizing the invisible
burdens they may have carried. And that leaves
me with a final provocative thought for you to
ponder today as you go about your week. The next
time you watch a movie or a sporting event or
even just look around at the hierarchy of your
own company or community. Look past the main
eventers. Look past the stars. Look past the
stars whose names are on the marquee. Take a
moment to look at the jobbers. The people doing
the heavy unglamorous lifting day in and day
out just to keep the machinery moving, to make
the leaders look good. What hidden battles might
they be fighting? What unseen legacies do they
carry? Because as we've learned today with Iron
Mike, sometimes the most fascinating, most heroic
story in the room isn't the one holding the championship
trophy. Thank you so much for joining us on this
deep dive into the life of Mike Sharp. It's been
a privilege to unpack this history and explore
this remarkable life. Remember to always look
a little closer at the background. Until next
time.