15 Things We Learned From Dark Side Of The Ring: Muhammad Hassan
4. “Don’t Buy The House”
This story shows the rotten human impact playing such a controversial character had on Marc's real life.
He'd been making some decent money since jumping up from OVW to WWE's main roster in late-2004, and Copani was ready to buy a house. Before putting an offer down for the property, he needed some reassurance from his employer that the Hassan gimmick had a bright future on television. So, Marc outright asked management's John Laurinaitis what he should do.
The answer chilled him. "Don't buy the house", Laurinaitis replied. That told Copani everything he needed to know. He was doomed due to incoming pressure that had flooded in from all comers pushing back on the anti-American gimmick. Sadly, this meant he didn't feel like he was in the right position to commit to buying the house, and he had to limp on until WWE cut ties following the Great American Bash in July 2005.
Copani became clear collateral damage here as WWE warred to fend off criticism for their own deliberately-incendiary booking. Maybe if they'd steered clear of talk about "sacrifice" and kept Hassan as more of an anti-terror persona horrified by the way he was being treated then everything would've turned out just fine, but no - Vince McMahon couldn't stop himself from seeking more and more heat at the cost of good taste.
The knock on impact of this, unfortunately, was that poor Marc Copani couldn't get his real life in order and buy the house of his dreams 'cause he didn't know if he'd have a job good enough to keep up mortgage payments.