12 Times WWE Brutally CANCELLED World Championship Reigns

7. Muhammad Hassan

Marc Julian Copani was hired, assigned a controversial character, did the best that he could do under what were dire circumstances, and was promptly binned off after it all went t*ts up: not to paraphrase Gene Snitsky of all people, but it wasn't his fault.

The character of Muhammad Hassan bordered too closely on political controversy as it is, but the angle in which he ordered a group of masked disciples that were ostensibly cast as terrorists to attack The Undertaker, strangle him with wire, and carry him out of the building martyr-style was regrettably broadcast in its original form on the episode of SmackDown that aired on the day of the 7/7 bombings in London. That is the fault of WWE, obviously, but Vince McMahon wasn't going to accept blame for it, was he?

It was Hassan who suffered. He was written off at The Great American Bash after taking a Last Ride through the stage, and would be released that September to end his legacy as nothing but a rotten footnote. The original plan was for him to topple 'Taker at the Bash, and then defeat Batista for the World Heavyweight Championship at SummerSlam. It was going to be, to paraphrase McMahon, "a big F-U to America."

The actual F-U to America was hiring a New Yorker of Italian descent to play a Jordanian-Palestinian 9/11 defender on your fake sports show.