The Secret History Of WWE’s Ruthless Aggression Era | Wrestling Timelines

July 7, 2005 - The Muhammad Hassan Controversy

Revisiting the dartboard analogy, it’s almost a wonder that it took WWE three years to exploit terrorism in storylines.

They do so via the Muhammad Hassan character.

Under the bogus pretense of an exploration of radicalisation, Hassan is portrayed as the victim of prejudice. This pretense isn’t even maintained before the character is introduced; when building up his impending arrival, Sunday Night Heat host Ivory mentions that she’s glad her co-host Todd Grisham is driving, and not flying, to the next show - “if you catch my drift”.

The character eventually commits what is meant to mirror an atrocity. On the July 7 SmackDown - taped before but broadcast across the USA on the day of the London Underground bombings - the Hassan character dispatches a bunch of extras clad in all black to strangle the Undertaker with piano wire.

All that “edgy crap” WWE insists it put behind them after the Attitude Era is in full, profoundly unsettling and insensitive effect. 56 people died as the result of a terrorist attack that very day, and WWE knows it.

Amid intense scrutiny and backlash, the Hassan character is dropped at the demand of network UPN after he does a job to ‘Taker at the Great American Bash on July 24. He is not repackaged. WWE tells him this isn’t possible. Bradshaw, who was accused of bullying Hassan, was turned into a stockbroker after playing a cowboy a year prior.

Hassan, beyond three indie dates in 2018, never returns to wrestling full-time. He enters a depression spiral from which he will take years to recover.