Mike Sharpe Michael " Mike " Sharpe ( October 28 , 1951 – January 17 , 2016 ) was a Canadian professional wrestler and actor better known as Iron Mike Sharpe . Career . Sharpe comes from a family legacy of wrestling , as his father Mike Sharpe Sr . and uncle Ben Sharpe were a successful tag team in the 1950s , recognized as champions from San Francisco to Japan . He grew up in California , but moved with his father back to Canada as a teenager . In high school , he dabbled in boxing and weightlifting before choosing to follow in his father ' s footsteps . Dewey Robertson trained him for the ring at age 25 and shortly thereafter Sharpe made his mark wrestling for promotions around Canada such as Gene Kiniski ' s NWA All - Star Wrestling . He became a two - time NWA Canadian Tag Team Champion , partnering first with Moose Morowski and later with Salvatore Bellomo , and also won the Pacific Coast Heavyweight title . His career picked up steam after moving to Louisiana , where he became a fan favorite and won two different Mid - South Wrestling belts - Louisiana champion ( two times ) and the Mississippi title ( also two times ) along with a Brass Knucks title in 1979 . In January 1983 , Sharpe entered the World Wrestling Federation and would become a regular of its programming throughout the mid - 1980s and early 1990s . He was announced and self - proclaimed as " Canada ' s Greatest Athlete " ( a nickname taken from Kiniski ) and was further distinguished by his near - constant yelling and grunting throughout a match , as well as a mysterious black brace on his right forearm , supposedly protecting an injury but more widely believed to contain a foreign object . Initially in his WWF career he was managed by Captain Lou Albano and received a sizeable push , regularly defeating jobbers after smashing them with said forearm . This culminated on April 30 , 1983 with a match against world heavyweight champion Bob Backlund at the Philadelphia Spectrum , but Sharpe was defeated and would never reach such main event heights again . In fact , Sharpe would never hold a single title for the promotion , and would become largely relegated to the mid - card of house show s and being regularly used as a jobber himself to rising stars of the then - WWF in television tapings . New England area fans were less impressed with Sharpe than those in the South , and reports from the era say ' WIMP ! ' was a common insult flung his way . Despite the derision , Sharpe had a few more memorable moments over his WWF career . He appeared on Piper ' s Pit in 1984 , provided the opposition in Ivan Putski ' s 1987 comeback match at Madison Square Garden , and pinned Boris Zhukov to reach the second round of the 1988 King of the Ring tournament . And though he wrestled as a heel in the WWF , Sharpe was also the tag team partner of none other than Hulk Hogan during a tour of Japan against stars of New Japan Pro Wrestling in early 1984 ( Hogan was heel in Japan ) . In what may be his last televised match , Sharpe was defeated by the short - lived Man Mountain Rock on May 15 , 1995 . For some time after his retirement Sharpe had made his living teaching aspiring wrestlers at Mike Sharpe ' s School of Pro - Wrestling located in Brick , New Jersey and later Asbury Park , New Jersey ( the school has since closed down ) . Among the better known of his proteges are Mike Bucci ( b . k . a . Nova and Simon Dean ) , Chris Ford ( a . k . a . Crowbar and Devon Storm ) and the Haas brothers , Charlie and Russ . Sharpe is described in at least three books by former wrestling personalities ( Tom " Dynamite Kid " Billington , Hulk Hogan and Gary Michael Cappetta ) as having shown characteristics of obsessive - compulsive disorder , as evidenced by a preoccupation with cleanliness that caused him to spend hours washing his hands or showering at arenas and meticulously folding and re - folding his clothing . According to Cappetta , Sharpe ' s behavior earned him the nickname " Mr . Clean " among his co - workers . Death . Sharpe died on January 17 , 2016 at the age of 64 after he had been battling several health issues . Acting career . Mike will be making his film debut in 2010 ' s " Cartel " co - starring Josh Brolin .