"We started to push it too far." - Muhammad Hassan on how the London bombings affected his WWE run
Muhammad Hassan is infamous among the WWE community for his character which portrayed a few controversial terrorist angles. Due to the unfortunate coincidence of the 7th July 2005 London bombings, a controversial angle with The Undertaker received a lot of backlash as they aired almost at the same time. The media backlash forced WWE take him off television and after that, he had to leave the company. Muhammad Hassan would retire from professional wrestling and the enormous planned push that had been there for him never came about.
Recently, Chris Van Vliet interviewed Muhammad Hassan on his podcast, The Chris Van Vliet Show, and talked about a variety of different topics, including how the London bombings affected his WWE run.
Muhammad Hassan on the effect the London bombings had on his WWE career
Talking about the tragic bombings, Muhammad Hassan revealed that even if the tragedy had not taken place, his character would have been able to be a part of WWE television tapings for only a little time more.
Muhammad Hassan said that they had started to push the controversial character too far already and Daivari was being treated as a martyr, something that was extremely offensive. Media and Muslim American groups were not happy with the angle and the entire thing had gotten a bit too political, and the character was no longer someone that the fans loved to hate. Instead, it cross a line.
"I think so for a little while until we started to push it too far. It was the masked men, it was treating Daivari as a martyr, it was carrying him out martyr style. It was everything about the character that was starting to draw heat with media, with Muslim American groups and eventually it started to change this heat from this genuine heat where the fans loved to hate this character to something that became a bit more. A little more political." - h/t Chris Van Vliet
It would have been interesting to see where the character would have gone in WWe if not for the tragedy. Had WWE booked Muhammad Hassan's character differently, he might have gone on to receive a huge push that had been in the plans for him.
Muhammad Hassan also created a graphic novel with former WWE Superstar Shad Gaspard. The graphic novel "Assassin and Son" is available now through scoutcomics.com with all of the proceeds going to Shad's family.
You can also check out Sportskeeda's interview with Muhammad Hassan.