10 Wrestlers Who Were Driven Out Of The Business
8. Muhammad Hassan
On Something To Wrestle, Bruce Prichard had the nerve to suggest that Vince McMahon actually said, in a creative meeting, words to the effect of "Man, Arab-Americans are getting a bad rap. How should we reflect that they aren't all terrorists through the nice lens of our television show?"
Of course, the resulting Muhammad Hassan character did become a terrorist in storylines, but that was your fault. Each and every one of you blamed him for the events of 9/11 and treated him differently after that fateful day. Shame on you. Shame on you for making the monster and not breaking the cycle.
Hassan, and this was always going to happen, wasn't simply a babyface who drew a heel reaction through zero fault of his own. WWE might have told by their dog sh*t standards a nuanced story had that happened. He instantly told the crowd that they were prejudiced. The whole thing was bleak, desperate bait, and when the fans did what they were told, the Hassan character was emboldened to further his "cause", and he did so on the highly controversial July 7, 2005 SmackDown by summoning five terrorists who then choked the Undertaker out with piano wire.
This was dreadful in and of itself, was made far worse by the timing of the London bombings, and since Hassan was stigmatised as WWE's worst creative impulses manifest, his career was dead. He was driven out of the business, and of course, being a developmental graduate in the mid-2000s, his passion was drilled out of him when he was "ribbed" into telling Eddie Guerrero that he shouldn't use the Camel Clutch, which, of course, Guerrero's father invented.
Ironically, he was terrorised in Wrestler's Court,