In-depth coverage.
Muhammad Hassan was one of the most controversial characters to ever step through the walls of WWE. The moment that he is famously remembered for was the segment with The Undertaker during an episode of SmackDown where he summoned five masked men dressed in ski masks, camo pants and black shirts to come and attack The Undertaker. That segment aired on July 4th in 2005 and unfortunately for Hassan the London Bombings took place three days later where four Islamic men detonated three bombs aboard London underground trains and a fourth bomb on a double-decker bus.
The tragedy led to the network 'UPN' which featured SmackDown at the time wanting Hassan off their network. Due to the consistent backlash from the media, WWE was forced to write Hassan off of television and in September of 2005 he was released from the company. It has been documented that after facing The Undertaker at the 'Great American Bash' PPV, Hassan was supposed to go on and main event the 2005 SummerSlam PPV and challenge Batista for the World Heavyweight Championship.
Hassan returned to the ring this past April in his first match in over 13 years and on the next episode of former WWE creative writer Bruce Prichard's 'Something To Wrestle' podcast he will be covering the rise and unfortunate fall of Muhammad Hassan's career. The host of the podcast Conrad Thompson spoke with Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated and discussed the episode that dropped today.
“This guy was supposed to headline SummerSlam in 2005 for the world title,” said Thompson. “But WWE taped that unfortunate angle, where they mimicked the wire strangulations of masked men and it certainly looked like a terrorist attack. Unfortunately, real attacks did happen in London, but WWE could have just edited it out. Bruce maintains that they couldn’t have, but why not? They knew they had something controversial, and this ended one of the hottest characters on their show." Conrad said. "He was banned. So they had The Undertaker powerbomb him through the stage and got an overhead shot of a pool of blood, implying that the character was killed off. That never happens.”
Prichard and Conrad also have a show on the WWE Network entitled 'Something Else To Wrestle' which had its season finale this past Wednesday. To read up on how that show came about, click here.
