10 Worst WWE Roster "Shake-Up" Moves
8. Muhammad Hassan To SmackDown (2005)
Well, this one went badly.
Hassan's original WWE character was a curious one: an Arab-American who in the short few years since 9/11 had grown weary of being discriminated against, based on the color of his skin. The problem was that Hassan was a heel, and was somehow wrong for wanting to be treated fairly. Yes, he did heelish things in the ring, but the initial gist of the character was nowhere near worthy of condemnation.
When Hassan moved to SmackDown in the summer of 2005, WWE commissioned an angle where Hassan had a cell of masked followers (one guess what they were supposed to represent) attack The Undertaker with clubs and piano wire, before carrying off Hassan's lackey Daivari in martyr-like fashion. To make matters worse, the angle aired roughly 18 hours after the London transit system was attacked in a triple bombing, so an already insensitive angle looked much more bone-headed.
Hassan was done in at the ensuing Great American Bash pay-per-view, and the real-life Mark Copani left the business entirely shortly afterwards at the age of 23.