#5.) Muhammad Hassan winning the World Heavyweight Championship
It was 2005 and Batista had joined SmackDown as the reigning World Heavyweight Champion in his first reign. He was dominant and was the perfect superstar to build the brand around. WWE also had in their hands the biggest heel in years in Muhammad Hassan. Now, the character played by the Italian-American Mark Copani was a controversial one, because of remarks made towards the United States of America.
In hindsight, many people have revealed that Hassan’s promos had a lot of truth to them, but 2005 was a different time. The plan was reportedly for him to feud with The Undertaker and then go on to beat Batista for the World Heavyweight Championship at SummerSlam that year. Unfortunately, the angle with The Undertaker was taken too far when he was attacked and taken away by masked people, implying that they were terrorists. Just a few days later, the London bombings happened and it turned out to be a PR nightmare for WWE.
As a result, they would cancel Hassan’s push and write off his character after pressure from TV executives. The Undertaker beat him to a pulp and that was the end of Hassan in WWE.
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