10 Times WWE Asked You To Blindly Hate Foreigners

A prevailing narrative on Muhammad Hassan's shortened tenure with WWE is that he was destined to become a huge star had it not been for the horribly timed 'terrorist attack' on The Undertaker screened days after the July 2005 London Bombings.

Hearsay from insiders at the time suggest he would have eventually received a push against World Heavyweight Champion Batista following his programme with 'The Deadman', had the segment not been so destructive and ill-timed that it resulted in the complete deletion of the character less than a month later.

In reality though, fan nostalgia seems to stem more from the idea of the character, rather than what was actually portrayed.

Hassan debuted in late 2004 via a vignette that positioned him as a troubled Arab-American that had experienced abuse in post-9/11 USA. Unusually layered for a character of this nature, it appeared as though the company were actually going to try and articulate the struggles of millions of Americans in his position that had been made to feel strangers in their own country.

Hope was dashed within weeks, when Hassan became an generic anti-US propaganda merchant, trotted out to provide lay-ups to any old babyface who wanted to get a cheap pop for showering love on America. WWE as an organisation basically made it okay to hate.

Literally everybody ganged up on him in an uncomfortable scene at 2005's Royal Rumble, and Stone Cold Steve Austin infamously uttered 'I see sand people' when addressing Hassan and his manager Davari.