"Iron" Mike Sharpe: Embrace the Brace

On the morning of February 5, 2018 my wife slipped and fell on a patch of black ice on our driveway. She broke her wrist when she landed hard on her outstretched hand. In the hospital, a doctor set the broken bone back into position and placed a cast on my wife’s wrist. She had to wear the cast for 6 to 8 weeks, during which time she couldn’t go to work or do regular household chores.

My son was only seven months old at the time so he required a lot of care. Even though I thought I could meet the challenge of keeping house during the day and going to work at night, I soon realized I was in way over my head.

Two weeks later, we hired a nanny we really couldn’t afford to help take care of my seven month old son and my almost two-year-old daughter. As bad as those 8 weeks were, financially and emotionally, the worst of it was seeing the longing in my wife’s eyes whenever the nanny cradled our son to sleep. There were so many missed bonding moments between them, the 8 weeks my wife spent in a wrist cast felt like forever.

After the cast was off, my wife wore a black wrist brace for a few months. By this time she had more mobility in her wrist and was back at work. When her wrist brace eventually came off, I took it to the gym one day and wore it. It had nothing to do with my wrist, of course, but everything to do with fitness fashion. The black wrist brace gave me gravitas.

It screamed: “STAND BACK EVERYONE! I’VE INJURED MYSELF BEFORE AND I’M NOT AFRAID TO DO IT AGAIN! IT’S A TESTAMENT TO MY INTENSITY SO DON’T QUESTION MY INTENSITY!”

No one in the gym was questioning my intensity except me, so what started out as a function of gym aesthetics eventually became a function of comfort and protection. Protection from what I have no idea, but I felt protected nevertheless.

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Remembering "Iron" Mike Sharpe

Wearing my wife’s black wrist brace made me feel as ballsy as a leather-clad heavy metal god with a 6 octave vocal range a la Rob Halford of Judas Priest and as strong as “Iron” Mike Sharpe, the Canadian pro-wrestling superstar who was a mainstay in the WWF from 1983 to 1995.

Sharpe wore a black forearm brace supposedly meant to treat a real forearm injury he sustained early in his wrestling career that never quite healed. It’s kind of hard to heal a forearm injury when you use the forearm brace to knock out your opponents. The word was Sharpe’s brace was loaded with something heavy and hard, maybe even a piece of iron itself. Whatever was in it (sometimes it’s better not to know), the forearm brace was a great wrestling gimmick.

What was better than watching Sharpe forearm smash a charging opponent was watching him adjusting the forearm brace moments before he used the “Iron Hammer”—the name of his finishing move—to end the match.

He was really selling the loaded forearm theory, making it seem like there was some thingamajig in the forearm that needed activation. Sharpe wasn’t very consistent with the forearm activation though. Sometimes he’d twist the brace to one side or other and it would appear activated.

Other times, he’d push the brace up and it appeared activated. I think there were also times when he wouldn’t activate the brace at all, as if he’d figured out a way to keep the brace weaponized at all times.

"Iron" Mike Sharpe - "Canada's Greatest Athlete"

Although the 6-foot-4, 240-pound Sharpe wasn’t as chiseled as, say, an Ivan Putski or Superstar Billy Graham, his hulking figure was still quite imposing and well conditioned. Serious about his physical conditioning, Sharpe was rumored to run through a vigorous regimen of calisthenics before and after his matches, hooping and hollering up and down empty arena stairways the way he hooped and hollered in the ring.

Sharpe’s loud grunting and yelling during matches rivaled any of those in tennis, prompting any number of irked fans to grunt right back at him. As irritating as those mocking grunts were for Sharpe, nothing, and I mean nothing pissed him off as much as when fans chanted “WIMP” at him. It drove him crazy.

Sometimes the chants were so loud, Sharpe would make his ring entrance with his hands over his ears. At the end of one entertaining match with one baby-faced jobber named Jose Luis Rivera, Sharpe was so incensed by the “WIMP” chants, he ripped the ring microphone from the announcer to tell the wild Philadelphia Spectrum fans in attendance: “YOU’RE ALL A BUNCH OF WIMPS! THAT’S WHAT I THINK OF YOU!” Short and to the point, but man did it rile up that Philly crowd. Sharpe really knew how to egg on a crowd.

If, as commonly said, the camera adds ten pounds to the photographed face then the leather forearm brace Mike Sharpe wore must’ve added twenty pounds of girth to his already super-thick arms. The forearm brace I borrowed from my wife made my arm feel dense and somewhat enhanced, as if my mediocre arm was replaced by a robotic prosthetic.

This, of course, was a throwback fantasy to the many childhood hours I spent watching THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN. The brace was the closest I’d ever get to feeling like Steve Austin—the bionic man, not the wrestler. Silly fantasy, I know, but probably more common than you’d think.

I love the idea of humans and machines working interdependently toward one shared goal neither could have reached alone. It’s the reason I agreed to organ donation on the back of my driver’s license, adding the donation of my brain to the fill-in section so I could live a second life on earth as a cyborg. Uh, and uh, also help other people who need, uh…organs to live.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m trying to stave off death as long as possible, but until that day arrives, my cybernetic dream will have to play out via a foam-padded mesh material forearm arm brace I borrowed from my wife. It’s the only way to feel like I have enhanced human abilities. Pathetic, I know.

"Iron" Mike Needs To Be Remembered

Who knows if “Iron” Mike Sharpe was into the symbiotic partnership of humans and machines and the enhancement inherent in it or just the raw feeling of power the excess poundage on his forearm gave him.

Either way, he knew how to wield the leather brace to good effect, riling crowds to no end and beefing his image up to “enhancement talent”—a term that had more to do with the enhancement of the people he wrestled than his own. Yes, after his initial meteoric rise to top contender status in the WWF, Mike Sharpe quickly became a heel jobber who lost a lot more matches than he won.

There weren’t a lot of heel jobbers out there that I can remember. Some of the standouts were Barry Horowitz, The Brooklyn Brawler (aka Steve Lombardi), and Lanny Poffo (when he was billed as The Genius), but among them there was only one—Mike Sharpe. Maybe it was the flair he brought to his matches, the heat he drew from the audience and his willingness to give it his all in the ring to make a baby face a contender that made Sharpe more than just a jobber.

Like it or not, somebody has to lose. Sharpe was that guy, but he wasn’t a slouch. He wasn’t in the ring to be steamrolled. He was there to be competitive, there to get ugly. That takes talent and a lot of selflessness, especially when you know you’re a lot better than that. It’s a dirty job.

And that’s another thing Mike Sharpe wasn’t—dirty. One of the most prevalent rumors about “Iron” Mike Sharpe was about his penchant for physical cleanliness. Every wrestler that shoots about Sharpe mentions the hours Sharpe spent in the backstage showers after his matches, including the time he was locked up in an arena overnight when he didn’t get out of the shower quick enough.

As amusing as that anecdote it is, it’s also very sad when you consider the obsessive-compulsive nature of Sharpe’s penchant for cleanliness.

Some of the obsessive-compulsive behavior probably extended to the uniformity of Sharpe’s ring attire. He’s always wearing black trunks, black boots, and a white wrist strap on his left arm. And, of course, the same black leather forearm brace. The sameness of Sharpe’s attire imprinted itself in my brain so deeply he looked stark naked the day I saw a photo of him without the brace on his right arm. It was a crazy effect, but knowing about his obsessive-compulsive behavior explains the monotony.

Another thing about Mike Sharpe that remained unchanged throughout his career was his thick turf of curly hair. It may have looked like a bad-fitting toupee but it was definitely his real hair.

With his shock of curly dark locks, his monochromatic ring wear, and his hulking figure Sharpe looked like a wrestler from another place and time. Add a walrus moustache to him, and the man would’ve looked perfectly natural in a sepia photo circa the 1900’s. This is not to disparage Sharpe, but to say he was utterly classic, utterly timeless. And that’s a good way to be remembered.

“Iron” Mike Sharpe died on January 17, 2016. He was 64 years old. His health declined after a landscaping accident in Hamilton, Canada, his hometown. Word is he died alone in his basement.

The leather brace may have been a gimmick, but Mike Sharpe wasn’t. Gimmicks grow tiring, and have no intrinsic value other than the value we bring to them as human beings. Mike Sharpe infused the forearm brace he wore and used to devastating effect with every ounce of grit, girth, and gruffness he possessed, making the brace a part of him, not just some throwaway novelty. Mike Sharpe and his brace were one, forever melded to each other, forever melded to my mind. Some injuries are better left unhealed.

Long Live “Canada’s Greatest Athlete”!!!

P.S. My wife’s wrist has never been better.

Hi everyone. My name is Ariel Gonzalez, originally from Brooklyn, now living in the Garden State and I have a new podcast called “Wrestling With Heels On.”

On the podcast, I get to reminisce about my favorite wrestling bad guys from yesteryear. Light on stats and heavy on nostalgia, this little trip down villainy lane gives me a chance to visit the dark corridors of my wrestling soul, and it’s also fun to have a podcast.