MUHAMMAD HASSAN was one of the most controversial characters in World Wrestling Entertainment history. Very few individuals have elicited raw, genuine heat to the level that Marc Copani managed to evoke during his brief but highly eventful WWE run with the persona.
On episode 035 of Wrestling Life with Ben Veal, Marc Copani, now a happily-married father-of-four, living in Syracuse and fifteen years into a successful career in high school education, looks back on his time in the squared circle and the legacy he left behind in the world of sports entertainment.
WWE'S MUHAMMAD HASSAN: A "COURAGEROUS AND TRUTHFUL CHARACTER"
“Muhammad Hassan was a very courageous and truthful character, at least at the beginning," shares Copani. "It was such an uncertain time period for the United States with a lot of anti-Arab sentiment in our country following 9/11. Muhammad Hassan stands in his own time. That character was a product of the period. It began as a realistic portrayal of what Arab-Americans had been facing: by the time I debuted in 2004, almost three years had passed since 9/11 but in that time the discrimination and prejudice that Arab-Americans in the US faced had increased substantially.”
“The characters that Shawn [Daivari] and I portrayed were Arab-Americans. Muhammad Hassan was a realistic character speaking an uncomfortable truth to the ‘Land of the Free’ that nobody in the United States really wanted to hear. That character became a window into society.”
MUHAMMAD HASSAN GENERATED HUGE HEAT FROM DAY ONE
“I was very fortunate to work with some of the best promo guys in the entire business who were way beyond my skill level,” says Copani, looking back on his time in WWE.
“Debuting against Mick Foley was a huge honour and our segment together was relatively unscripted. Mick plays on the emotions of the crowd and what he is feeling in the moment and improvs what he says to get reactions. Being out there and holding my own against him was a crash-course in how to draw on the emotions of the crowd and also how to be articulate enough to emphasise my feelings in that moment. That’s what I loved about that promo; even though I may have been speaking the truth, so was Mick. We both believed in what we were saying and that generated a ton of raw emotion. I still have my father’s ticket from that event, my very first live appearance on WWE TV — my family had it framed for me and I keep it in my office because I’m proud of it. I looked up to Mick greatly and read his book when I was training to be a wrestler, so going head-to-head with him on Raw was a huge moment for me. It set the stage for what was to come: that one promo immediately elevated Muhammad Hassan to a main event level.”
WHAT HAPPENED TO MUHAMMAD HASSAN?
The Muhammad Hassan character was infamously written off WWE TV in the summer of 2005 after an attack on The Undertaker by Hassan, Daivari and masked men in ski masks ended up airing on Smackdown during the same week as the very real terror attacks in London claimed the lives of over fifty people and injured a further seven hundred on July 7, 2005.
As the world reeled from another shocking attack on a major Western city, the highly unfortunate timing and content of the angle prompted global outrage and UPN’s edict to the WWE that the Muhammad Hassan character be removed from Smackdown programming as quickly as possible.
“I felt we had gone too far by that point,” reveals Copani, looking back on his final month with the company. “My character was going backwards, in my opinion. It went from a very real place, playing back xenophobic perceptions of Arab-Americans, to morphing into someone who relied more on religion than a justified [sense of] anger at society. Once we turned more towards religion as the basis of that anger, it really changed how the character was represented by WWE. It shifted from Muhammad Hassan being this ‘third class citizen’ to a religious fanatic, and it didn’t need to. That character was already generating plenty of heat. But it happened, it was the way it went down, and once the London bombings took place, the character had to go. I already felt like Muhammad Hassan had lost his way before that, and I did vocalise my concerns to the WWE’s writing team. A character like Muhammad Hassan would never work in wrestling today, and nor should it — we have a very different sensibility towards people who are ‘not like us.’ The character was no longer entertainment after the London bombings; it was insensitive.”
MARC COPANI ON HIS CONTROVERSIAL WRESTLING LIFE
Reflecting back on his wrestling life almost two decades on from his WWE tenure, Marc Copani is able to see the many positives that emerged during his eventful run: “That character was very polarising, but people still reach out to me and tell me how grateful they were to have someone who looked like them defending what they felt at the time. It’s truly humbling that a character I played with real emotion, who felt real injustice, helped some Middle Eastern wrestling fans to get through a very difficult time in the United States. I’m proud that the character brought recognition to how invalid it was to treat people in an unjust way without knowing who they were in reality. The real emotional impact that character had on a lot of people is why we’re still talking about Muhammad Hassan twenty years later.”
REAL TALK FROM REAL TALENT
Wrestling Life with Ben Veal shines the spotlight brightly and positively on those who shaped wrestling's past, drive its present and influence its future. The show is widely available and features honest, open and inspiring conversations with many of the sport's biggest names, including Kurt Angle, Rob Van Dam, Mick Foley, Lilian Garcia, Candice Michelle, Marc Mero, Buff Bagwell, Doug Williams, Eric Bischoff and many more.
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About the author: Ben Veal is a writer, content creator, journalist, and host of Wrestling Life and the founder of Second Mountain Comms, a purpose-driven award-winning PR and marketing business that helps good people do good. A Chartered PR professional and passionate fan of the artform of professional wrestling for more than three decades, Ben is committed to sharing the real stories behind wrestling's talented performers.,