The Undertaker's Secret WWE Arch Enemy Nobody Talks About
In mid-2005, Muhammad Hassan had what most witnesses called a career-shortening interaction with The Undertaker. Then after that absurd Wrestler's Court exchange, he was given a Last Ride through a metal stage at the Great American Bash pay-per-view.
Taking very bad advice from a very bad-intentioned Kurt Angle "as a rib", Hassan politely asked Eddie Guerrero to stop using the camel clutch in matches on account of it being his finisher. Per all the stories, 'Latino Heat' was very chilled about the request, but it all fed into a wider joke at Marc Copani's expense. He wasn't aware that Eddie's father Gory invented the move. Eddie didn't boot off, but everybody else did. Once again, Wrestler's Court beckoned. His perceived disrespect toward the Guerrero family resulted in Hassan being charged by Judge Deadman or whatever he called himself, and the rest of the losers in the room. He was ordered to cover a bar tab that the wrestlers gleefully took advantage of, with Copani reflecting later that it came out at around $2,000. The gimmick's impending demise increasingly started to look like a blessing rather than a curse, though the departure would forever be attached to the infamy that came just before.
Ahead of the aforementioned bout with The Undertaker that felt like the next logical step in getting Hassan ready for his potential SummerSlam scrap with Dave Batista, the one-time 'American Bad Ass' was set upon a gang of of military-fatigued men in masks on an episode of SmackDown taped on the July 4th edition of SmackDown. After Undertaker had battered Daivari, the men garrotted him with piano wire and carried the manager out as a martyr for the cause. Dated beyond the pale and set to annoy the wrong people before the worst case scenario had occurred, WWE had lost sight of everything in a quest for nothing. It was the cheapest of stunts on the most sacred of days. Easy to see what they were going for, but as it turns out, you shouldn't have been able to see it at all. Real life intervened sharply, when, a day before the show was set to air internationally, the 7/7 bombings occurred in London, killing 56 and injuring hundreds more. The segment still aired in its entirety in various international markets (though not in the UK per Sky Sports and UPN's collective insistence it get pulled) and the furore was such that WWE elected to give up on the gimmick and wrestler entirely at 'The Bash'. It was to be one and done for Undertaker and Hassan, with the aforementioned finisher being so effective that hit wrote him off television forever. It served more as a walk-back for the poor taste of the attack, but wrestling has a funny way of atoning for its sins and this was seen by many as a perfect way to draw a line under things. Until the demands of the 52-week-a-year product dictated otherwise.
After a few months back in developmental, storyline survivor Daivari ("Khosrow" was dropped from the presentation) appeared back on television as the ultimate cheap heat magnet for a Kurt Angle character getting cheered against top babyface John Cena. What would eventually become familiar within WWE was at the time deemed unthinkable, and it was to Daivari's credit that the company believed he'd be the necessary lightning rod to fix the apparent glitch in the system that had occurred for the first time when Cena feuded with Chris Jericho months earlier. 'Big Match John' went on to face this divisiveness for the rest of his full-time career, but one babyface with no such worry was The Undertaker. What he needed was a WrestleMania opponent of reasonable calibre, and when Mark Henry was deemed to not quite fit the bill, he too was given Daivari as a manager to drum up the heat where a 'World's Strongest Man' couldn't. For the second time in less than a year, Daivari was memorably decimated by 'The Deadman', this time eating a Tombstone on top of a wooden casket on the pre-'The Show Of Shows' 2006 reboot of Saturday Night's Main Event.
Henry was a dud of an opponent for Undertaker either side of the battle with Orton and an epic war with Batista one year later. That battle with 'Big Dave' was a turning point for both men, kicking off an all-time rivalry and helping each man find a rich vein of form they'd tap for years to come. 2006 wasn't quite as kind to either, and in The Undertaker's case, ancient history was about to repeat itself.
When Harvey Wippleman wanted to drop a bomb on The Undertaker, he unleashed Giant Gonzalez. When Daivari wanted to do the same, The Great Khali was his weapon of choice. Midway through an Undertaker/Mark Henry rematch on the SmackDown after WrestleMania, Khali was introduced the world, towering above everybody including a deliriously happy Daivari. The Royal Rumble 1993 tapes had been well-studied, with their face-to-face drawing gasps before Khali felled Undertaker with a single chop. Undertaker sat up, but Khali effortlessly ripped the turnbuckle pad off and smashed his face into the steel before taking him down and out with a series of giant punches and kicks. When the two wrestled for the first time at May's Judgment Day, the presentation was even more effective. Taker sold and sold, gaining only a brief measure of revenge when Khali found himself tied in the ropes. Daivari was once again a difference maker, providing enough of a distraction to free the beast and allow him to hit a monstrous big boot before a single chop and kick to the head allowed for a win with a one-foot pin. On commentary, Tazz noted how 15,000 people were in shock, and the only thing he was wrong about was the attendance figure. SmackDown pay-per-views didn't pull up trees and Khali wasn't as big a needle-mover domestically as much as in his homeland, but between Undertaker and Daivari, he'd been given the best possible chance to succeed.
Ahead of the first ever Punjabi Prison match between the two at The Great American Bash in June, Daivari recruited ECW's Big Show to help him inflict further damage. As commentators questioned of The Undertaker was the same version of himself after the first kicking, his very legacy hung in the balance ahead of whatever this new stipulation looked like. Daivari threw down the gauntlet to confirm Khali as WWE's "phenom" once and for all, leading the giant on a charge through the SmackDown undercard until Undertaker answered the call and accepted the challenge. Meanwhile, Khali and Big Show's reign of terror continued until the pay-per-view itself when, seemingly inexplicably, Khali was taken out of the contest.
On-screen Teddy Long decided to punish Big Show for his sidekick duties by making him enter the bamboo structure with The Undertaker, but in reality, Khali had failed a wellness test and couldn't work. The end result stunk and was weird, but with Show effectively serving as one of Daivari's goons rather than his final boss, what chance did it have? Just how retrograde this all was brought into focus in the immediate aftermath. As with the Million Dollar Corporation and the older monsters of yore, once the suspension of disbelief was gone, so too was the buy-in to anything Undertaker was up to.
Their business was concluded August 18th in a well-received SmackDown Last Man Standing main event. Naturally, Daivari was key to its success. Constantly throwing himself in harm's way, he took some spectacular bumps on the fondly-remembered SmackDown fist stage, going head first into the stage glass and ass-first down the mini-ramp Rey Mysterio had for his entrances. It ended in grisly fashion, with a series of of-the-time chairshots that bloodied up Khali and left Daivari's empire ruined once and for all, and was an appropriate end-of-the-world finale that - in all-but the violence - mirrored how 'The Lord Of Darkness' would vanquish his foes a decade earlier. WWE had repeated history, and though they'd failed to learn any of the lessons from the last time one of their biggest stars had been lumbered with human obstacles, not all was lost. The 2005/6 dalliance with Daivari et al served as an important reminder to WWE had what they actually had with The Undertaker, versus what they could lose. From this point onwards, the unbeaten WrestleMania streak became arguably the biggest draw WWE had for the 'Show Of Shows' on an annual basis, and his feuds in general were - when at all possible - contained to being for big titles or even bigger stakes.
Far from being the death knell on a glorious run, this strange rivalry was in fact the motivation Mark Calaway needed to rethink and completely reshape the next chapter of his iconic career.