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When Iron Sheik died last year at age 81, the professional wrestling villain left behind his finishing move, the Camel Clutch, dozens of hilarious but polarizing tweets and a blunt take on life: You You were either the real thing (a legitimate person) or a jabroni (a hack) – there was no in-between.
But the Middle Eastern heel also gave us one of the best taunts in WWE history, an onomatopoeia that, thanks to the thick accent of a charismatic Tennessee girl and a viral video, has since taken on a whole new meaning: The Iron Sheik was the OG “Hawk Tuah”
In the 1980s, after the Sheik’s feud with the “real American” Hulk Hogan ended, the Iranian villain teamed up with Russian caricature Nikolai Volkoff to form a crack team that never missed an opportunity to take on American dominance. “Russia number one! Iran number one! The United States?” Hawk kill“, Iron Sheik shouted into the ring microphone before spitting insistently on the mat. This provoked great anger among the crowds, from Madison Square Garden to high school gymnasiums.
But when Hailey Welch made that exaggerated hocking-up-a-loogie sound last month during a street interview in Nashville, it made her as beloved as the sheik was hated. “You gotta give ’em that ‘hawk tuah’ and spit on that thing!” Welch responded when asked on camera to describe a sex move that makes a man lose his mind. In that moment, a pop culture moment was born that continues to reverberate like a body slam in the ring.
In the three weeks since the interview was published, Welch began selling merchandise with a Tennessee clothing company (worth at least $65,000 so far, they say) , made an onstage appearance at Zach Bryan’s show at Nashville Stadium that made more headlines than an appearance by singer Kacey Musgraves, and was offered hundreds of dollars to spit in a jar. “I thought, ‘Should I do this?’ And I said, ‘No, don’t do that,'” Welch told Brianna LaPaglia on an episode of the Bri Plan podcast, the first “real” interview she did.
So far, Welch — who was born well after Iron Sheik’s heyday — has not said whether the wrestler’s use of the phrase may have found its way into her brain. But the man who continues to run the Sheik’s Twitter hasn’t been silent. On June 22, the account posted a video of Iron Sheik dropping his signature phlegm bomb with the caption, “The Original Hawk Tuah.” Only a Jabroni would disagree.
Gn entert
News Source : www.rollingstone.com
