On the July 4, 2005 WWE taped an angle that saw Muhammad Hassan pray on the ramp as masked men attacked and choked The Undertaker with piano wire. THe men then carried away Hassan's associate Shawn Daivari.
The segment aired on the July 7th episode of WWE SmackDown, the same day as the London bombings.
The angle was covered by major media outlets including the New York Post, TV Guide, and Variety.
Speaking to Maven, Hassan looked back on the angle.
“So this was filmed on a Tuesday. The London bombing happened I believe on a Thursday morning, SmackDown was set to go on air Thursday evening. They made the decision to air it in its entirety with this match with Shawn acting like the Muslim martyr being carried out of the ring with a [text] at the bottom in England talking about, you know, this may be sensitive to some viewers. When this happened on SmackDown, it reached, it was in the local newspaper in Syracuse and no one even knew that I was from Syracuse. It was in Time Magazine, it was everywhere.
“This was seven minutes of a segment and to take it off of TV would’ve left like a huge — in the United States, I mean okay, it’s different than what happened in England but after this, after this it was over. We had media outrage about the fact that we even aired it.”
He continued, “I was supposed to beat The Undertaker and then I was supposed to wrestle Dave Bautista in DC where he is billed from and it was a big fuck you to America that the Arab defeats the hometown boy in the nation's capital.”
WWE filmed a promo from Hassan where he explained that he is an Arab-American and that the American people automatically and unfairly assume that he is a terrorist. The promo aired on WWE's website and Hassan was kept off television due "unfair treatment by Americans."
Hassan was effectively written off television for good at WWE Great American Bash when he was defeated by The Undertaker.
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