WWE has had its share of controversial characters, few more controversial than Muhammad Hassan, played by Marc Copani. The character was an Arabic man who was seemingly radicalized by the post-9/11 Islamaphobia that was omnipresent in pop culture of 2004-2005.
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Hassan's run with WWE was short-lived, after an ersatz-terrorist attack on The Undertaker aired inappropriately close to the London train bombing of 2005, leading to his character being written off at that year's Great American Bash, chokeslammed through the stage and never seen again. Copani has discussed the character and why it wouldn't work in modern-day wrestling.
"Muhammad Hassan would never work now," Copani told Maven Huffman bluntly. "It shouldn't. It wouldn't and it shouldn't work. It's not the kind of character that agrees with modern society and that's perfectly fine. That's what I love about the character, is that it stays in its time and here I am living a very different life and that character just gets to stay in its time. To me, that's perfect."
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Copani had initially been resistant to his character becoming the extremist character it became in the back half of its existence, feeling that the company was taking the character into a dark place, especially with the faux terrorist attack that spelled the character's doom.
The former WWE starrecently revealed that he was open to developing a new character after Hassan was "killed off" by The Undertaker, but the chance never came. Copani has learned to accept this fact, and his body is choosing to stay away from wrestling easily as he stated that his back is simply in too rough shape for him to even consider any kind of physicality in the ring.
