10 Biggest Heat Magnets In WWE History

There tend to be two schools of thought as to the treatment that Mark ‘Muhammad Hassan’ Copani received during his seven months (seven months!) as a WWE performer, which spanned from December 2004 to July 2005.

The first is that he deserved everything he got: that he was pushed to the moon at only twenty-two years of age and with less than two years in the business, acting the prima donna and spending money he didn’t have to justify his vastly over-inflated ego.

The other is that reports of Copani’s bad attitude were grossly exaggerated and that the kid had tried desperately to fit in, but that locker room jealousy of his position - hotshotted into high profile feuds with Hulk Hogan, Shawn Michaels, Mick Foley, Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler, Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Batista, John Cena and The Undertaker - caused him to be bullied mercilessly from the very beginning.

The truth may, of course, be somewhere in between. But the documented stories of the hazing her received aren’t a matter of speculation. He was hauled up into wrestler’s court twice during his very short career. First, for supposedly refusing to sell for Sgt. Slaughter in their January 2005 match (although rumour has it that he may have been specifically told to no-sell the ageing patriot’s offence to get heat).

Second, for taking the late, great Eddie Guerrero aside and complaining about his use of the Camel Clutch as a finish, as it was the one he was using. You can imagine the kind of fury this aroused in the notoriously fiery veteran Guerrero, being taken to task by a rookie, especially since the ‘Camel Clutch’ was in fact invented by Gory Guerrero and Latino Heat had simply been paying tribute to his own legendary father.

Again, rumour had it that Copani had been encouraged to approach Guerrero as a rib… if so, then the court’s judgment that the kid would have to pay the locker room’s $4,000 bar bill was excessive.

The story goes that Copani tried to smooth things over by buying all of the boys a shot in a bar in Tokyo, and that everyone present ostentatiously raised their glass and poured the contents onto the floor, which is a calculated diss of staggering proportions.

Had he remained on the roster, he might have been able to mend fences as The Miz and others have done in the past - but the notorious terrorism angle that aired on Smackdown on the same day as the terrorist attack on London was the final straw. Muhammad Hassan’s push was called off, and Copani was released two months later.

He never wrestled again.