When fans think back to Ruthless Aggression, they tend to focus on the rise of major homegrown talents like Brock Lesnar, John Cena, Randy Orton, and Batista. It’s also a period when guys like The Undertaker, Triple H, and Edge deeply enriched their legacies, and when Shawn Michaels returned to action and thrived. One name that had a lot of promise at the time, and yet is all but forgotten today is Muhammad Hassan.
The Muhammad Hassan Gimmick Capitalized On World Affairs At The Time
Muhammad Hassan was a provocative character from his introduction, set up with an interesting degree of nuance as an Arab-American man who felt discriminated against the wake of 9/11. The shades of gray predictably faded as time went on and fans were more invested in having a clear cut character to boo, but he nonetheless represented an intriguing creative effort and one unique to that time in American history.
As the character simplified, he was, more than anything, a modernized version of the “heel foreigner” type (despite being from the US). His heat was all about capitalizing on patriotic fervor and did succeed in drawing significant reactions from the WWE audience.
Muhammad Hassan Faced Off With Hulk Hogan, The Undertaker, And The World
Muhammad Hassan worked a featured spot in the 2005 Royal Rumble when the match stopped upon his entrance for everyone in the ring to team up and immediately eliminate him from the match. He was just getting started, as he feuded with a number of top babyfaces from the Ruthless Aggression Era and beyond in the months to follow. WrestleMania 21 saw him trade blows with Hulk Hogan in a guest spot, before he and Daivari faced Hogan and Shawn Michaels in a high profile match.
In what turned out to be his final act, Hassan was positioned to feud with The Undertaker, in a rivalry he looked poised to win before quite feasibly moving on to challenge Batista for the World Heavyweight Championship.
Muhammad Hassan Failed By No Fault Of His Own
It was questionable booking for Muhammad Hassan to suddenly find himself flanked by a crew of masked men who looked something like caricatures of terrorists. While the contrivance offered a reason for Hassan to be competitive against The Undertaker going into their clash at The Great American Bash 2005, it nonetheless made little storyline sense.
Things went from bad to much, mush worse for Hassan, though, when three days after the angle was filmed—and the day when SmackDown actually aired—a terrorist bombing occurred in London. The connections viewers drew between the two drew deep offense, if not outrage. In what was neither the first, nor the last instance of a TV network dictating to a wrestling promotion, UPN told WWE not to feature Hassan on their network again. While none of these issues were Hassan’s fault, the character went from edgy to unusable at this point.
Muhammad Hassan Chose To Walk Away From Wrestling
WWE shuffled Hassan back down to developmental for repackaging in the fallout from incident on SmackDown and after getting crushed by The Undertaker at The Great American Bash. He parted ways with WWE months later and promptly announced his retirement from the business.
While a lot of Hassan’s quick rise to near the top of WWE can be attributed to his noteworthy gimmick, that same gimmick set him up for one of the most dramatic falls in wrestling history. Though the notoriety of his run and how it ended probably meant he never would have been a world champion or main eventer in WWE afterward, choosing to leave wrestling altogether closed off an potential for a real comeback story. Hassan worked a few independent dates in the late 2010s, but that was the extent of his wrestling career to follow. A 2019 interview with Fightful indicated that he’s content away from the wrestling business now, recentered on his career as a school principal.
The Ruthless Aggression period wound up being one of the most influential and important times for WWE as they rebuilt and rebranded following the white hot Attitude Era. Muhammad Hassan seemed primed to be a leading figure in those years and moving forward, but his polarizing gimmick and real world events ultimately relegated him to being more of a footnote in wrestling history. It’s fascinating to consider what might have been for him, had WWE’s original plans and the talented youngster reached achieved their potential.