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02:15En el primer año 2000, la compañía se dificultó encontrar su footing en una nueva era.
02:23La WWE fue en un periodo de transición.
02:26Ellos perdieron Steve Austin a la enfermedad y la retirada.
02:30Ellos perdieron The Rock a los películas.
02:33Y estaban tratando de encontrar sus próximos superiores.
02:36Hola, Kentucky, y bienvenido a Ohio Valley Wrestling.
02:39Ohio Valley Wrestling was a local wrestling promotion and training center here in Louisville, Kentucky
02:45to serve as a developmental or a training program for aspiring WWE wrestlers.
02:51That's the trajectory that Brock Lesnar had taken and John Cena and Randy Orton and Batista.
02:58If you had the athletic background, the size, the personality,
03:02we could show you how to be a successful pro wrestler.
03:05I'm Jim Cornette, and I was one of the trainers of the wrestler that would come to be known as Muhammad Hassan.
03:13When Mark Caponi came in, he was 21 years old, he was in good shape, he had good looks,
03:19and you could see that he had a great amount of potential.
03:22Boy, this kid's coming up!
03:23Oh!
03:25I was always athletic, and I always played sports.
03:27So wrestling kind of combined all of that for me.
03:30Feast your eyes and fantasize on this year's model, Mark Magnus.
03:36Mark's character was, like, smug, arrogant,
03:40I'm better than you in every category type thing.
03:43My name's Chris Mordetsky, but you probably know me better as Chris Masters, the Masterpiece.
03:48Guys, I work on Mark!
03:49Mark was the OVW champion at one point.
03:52Obviously, so bad!
03:54Jim Cornette booked Mark in a way that would have helped give him an opportunity to get signed in WWE.
03:59Magnus up and over!
04:00In two years, he had gone from the lowest guy on the totem pole...
04:04Another fit!
04:04No, wait a minute!
04:05Yes!
04:05...to a main event wrestler in OVW.
04:08And all of a sudden, I get a call from the WWE office...
04:13...said they wanted to make him an Arab.
04:17I said, but he's Italian from Syracuse.
04:22How is this going to work?
04:24Jim Cornette told me what they were looking for.
04:27Didn't really know how I felt about it at the time, but this is a big opportunity.
04:32Not many people have a character that's handed to them, so there was no doubt about it.
04:37I was going to do the character.
04:39My name's Mark Kapani, and in 2004 and 2005, I played the character Muhammad Hassan on WWE.
04:46Mark was very dark-complected.
04:48He has the dark hair.
04:49He could look like a stereotypical Arab villain in a movie.
04:54Oh yeah, Jimmy, it's going to be that good.
04:56So now, Mark Magnus is no more, and instead, he is Muhammad Hassan.
05:02Praise Allah!
05:04When I told my family that I was going to be an Arab American, they definitely were trepidatious about the fact that I was going to be portraying another nationality, one in this country at the time, that was particularly not trusted and even hated.
05:19Now, wait a minute, the crowd have turned their backs on these three indivisible individuals.
05:27The character of Muhammad Hassan is a direct response to the horrific and tragic events of just a few years earlier.
05:34We have a breaking news story to tell you about.
05:37Apparently, a plane has just crashed into the World Trade Center here in New York City.
05:42I remember I was walking home from class, and I hear people talking, and I'm not really processing what they're saying.
05:49But I get home, and I turn the TV on, and I see the devastation.
05:56And then it hit me.
05:57This wasn't an accident.
05:59This was an attack.
06:01At the time, no one knew what was going to happen.
06:03It was very uncertain.
06:05And I think one of the things that wrestling did for me is when they went on the air right after 9-11, and the show must go on.
06:13We will not live our lives in fear.
06:19It was a defining moment that wrestling could have such a positive impact on me when I was feeling so negative.
06:27When I was scared, when I didn't know what was going to happen.
06:32I put wrestling on, and for those few hours, it didn't matter.
06:35The WWE was really rallying behind this patriotism.
06:44And that would embed the country coming out of 9-11, and it inevitably was going to seep into its programming.
06:52At Osama bin Laden, the exiled terrorist is involved, if not totally responsible for, this coordinated attack.
07:01Post-September 11th, there was so much discrimination going on.
07:05You couldn't really escape it in the United States around that time.
07:08A lot of people would think terrorist automatically.
07:11We have four basic emotions.
07:12Anger being one of them.
07:15Transform that into wrestling terms.
07:16You want to open that wound every time you possibly can.
07:21My name is Maven Huffman.
07:22I wrestled in the WWE alongside Muhammad Hassan.
07:26In 2004, 9-11 is still fresh on the minds of a lot of people.
07:31Once we saw Muhammad come out, we just were like, ugh, he's going to get heat.
07:37We will spread the word of Allah to all of you despicable infidels.
07:42The times we were in, we didn't need an arrogant Italian.
07:46We needed someone who could just garner the hatred of the fans.
07:52Along with the new Muhammad Hassan was going to be Sean Daivari.
07:57Sean Daivari is an independent wrestler that came out of Chicago
08:02and was someone that was assigned to be the second to Muhammad Hassan
08:07and was able to speak Farsi.
08:13They called me up if I'd like to offer your job.
08:15I met Mark Magnus, who was Muhammad,
08:18and he told me that they were going to be like two Arabs.
08:20Praise Allah!
08:23Before being introduced to the WWE audience,
08:28Kapani and Daivari test out their new characters in OVW.
08:33We started trying things out at house shows,
08:35and we didn't know the direction the character was going to take.
08:37This was a Vince McMahon idea,
08:40and whenever Vince McMahon had an idea,
08:42you knew it was going to go farther than almost anything else.
08:45An illegal war is being raised on an innocent people.
08:50At one point, it was very stereotypical,
08:53like we're going to raise the price of oil.
08:55We were going out there just trying different things
08:57to see how much heat we could generate from the crowd.
08:59You are a traitor to my country!
09:02I grew up in the era with the Paul Cogan
09:05and Ricky Steamboat and Randy Savage.
09:08It was these larger-than-life characters.
09:10Wrestling has always skimmed the surface
09:12of political events in the modern world.
09:14U.S.A. and Paul!
09:17Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff were cartoony with the accents,
09:21and I don't think Mohamed Hassan was any different when we started.
09:25It wasn't until we started filming the vignettes,
09:28and that's when the character took shape.
09:30WWE decides to introduce the character
09:33through pre-recorded segments
09:35that will air in anticipation of his in-ring debut.
09:39My name is Mohamed Hassan.
09:40Vignettes were a critical part of storytelling for WWE.
09:45My name is Michael Leonardi.
09:47I am a former writer and producer for World Wrestling Entertainment.
09:53It was our opportunity to present to the world this new character,
09:58and it played a huge role because it would really help them get off to a great start.
10:03Don't confuse me with acts of terrorism here in America.
10:07That's when it clicked for both Sean and I
10:11that this wasn't a foreign character.
10:13This was an American character of Muslim or Arab descent.
10:179-11 changed everything for me and my people.
10:21Who, rightfully so, is disgruntled.
10:24For Arab Americans, there is no equality.
10:27And discouraged and angry about what has been going on with his family and his community since 9-11.
10:35But because we're of Arab descent, we are singled out.
10:38These were really set up to highlight situations in which his character
10:44would experience biases or prejudice.
10:48Muhammad Hassan is presented in the light that just because of my nationality does not make me a terrorist.
10:55He was the antithesis of all of the stereotypes.
11:00But the day before Hassan's first appearance, controversy is stoked.
11:05On an episode of Sunday Night Heat, you had your broadcasters, Todd Grisham and Ivory,
11:10teeing up Muhammad Hassan's debut.
11:12Also tomorrow night, Muhammad Hassan makes his debut in the ring on Raw.
11:18I'm just asking, how are you going to get to Huntsville?
11:20I'm driving.
11:21Good, because I don't want you to be fine.
11:23I'm going to get my grip.
11:24And right there, the fact that we're going to make a flight joke,
11:28I think it kind of sets the tone for what the audience can expect.
11:32With expectations riding high, Mark Coppani prepares to make his entrance as Muhammad Hassan.
11:39I finally debuted in Huntsville, Alabama with Mick Foley.
11:44I was nervous.
11:45I felt like I was going to throw up.
11:47I remember we were really not 100% sure how they're going to take this character.
11:51It was very different.
11:53Mick Foley's out there just giving a riveting promo about the war in Afghanistan and supporting our troops.
11:59Supporting the troops goes way beyond any kind of political affiliation.
12:03Now I come out.
12:04Now our brave men and women.
12:11What is this?
12:12Man, as soon as that music hits and as soon as you step through that curtain,
12:15it's just, it's go time and it's business.
12:17And I interrupt Mick Foley and I am contradicting everything he says because this is my truth.
12:26It's people like us that are the real victims of this war.
12:31None of you people are real patriots.
12:34And instantly you are telling the audience if there was any confusion from these vignettes,
12:40you are instructed to hate Muhammad Hassan.
12:43I am sick of hearing you express your admiration for these troops.
12:48These gutless cowards.
12:50Now you're pissing me off.
12:52Here was somebody very clearly being presented as a villain because he was attacking Americans.
13:00I don't think Vince McMahon was trying to tell a complex story.
13:03Arab American, disgruntled, anti-American.
13:07Ooh, heel.
13:08He may even be justified in what he is saying, but he is anti-American.
13:12And I feel your patriotism at every airport and especially right now.
13:20It worked with the fans because they really did not like somebody coming out and telling them
13:27that America didn't have all the answers.
13:30When I came back through the curtain, I think a lot of people were very impressed
13:33and I think a lot of people were very excited about the potential of this character.
13:36I knew right away they were going to push him to the moon.
13:40He's got the look, he's got the skill, he's got the knowledge.
13:43Hi, this is Gene Snitsky.
13:45And I used to work with Muhammad Hassan.
13:48I can't remember anybody getting that much heat since the Iron Sheik.
13:52The animosity of people.
13:54Like they literally wanted to grab him and beat him.
13:57It's crazy.
13:58Over a wrestling character.
13:59He just had that aura about him to where people just didn't only hate him.
14:04They wanted to kill him.
14:11To all the men and women of the United States Armed Forces now in the Middle East,
14:15the peace of a troubled world and the hopes of an oppressed people now depend on you.
14:21In 2004, our nation was engulfed in a war in the Middle East.
14:26We're putting shows on in Iraq.
14:29WWE has returned to Iraq to celebrate the holidays with each and every one of you.
14:37Patriotism is huge in every aspect of our lives.
14:40Add wrestling to it, it just amps up the volume tenfold.
14:44WWE has the balls to come to Brad Silmore.
14:48So then when they heard this guy who might look like one of the terrorists going out basically saying,
14:57I had nothing to do with 9-11.
14:59I'm portrayed as the bad guy.
15:02I don't deserve this.
15:04You don't really care what he's going to say.
15:06New people have no idea what it's like to be me.
15:10They booed because it was showing a mirror to the face of the American public and the hypocrisy and the prejudice.
15:16America has literally ganked up on me and our Arab American brothers.
15:23That had really been pushed forward against the Muslim people in this country at the time.
15:28And people don't like to be shown their own flaws.
15:31Deep down inside your hearts, every single one of you is prejudiced.
15:38Growing up, I was always raised to not judge people by the color of their skin.
15:45My father told me about some of the struggles that my grandfather had.
15:48Being an Italian-American, it made me more aware and sympathetic to what Arab Americans were feeling at the time.
15:54These were people who had lived here, who had assimilated to this country.
15:57The same thing you see with the Japanese in World War II.
16:00It was completely unfair.
16:01It's disgraceful.
16:02And so when 9-11 happened, my concern was what's going to happen next.
16:07And that kind of became my catchphrase.
16:08Since 9-11.
16:09Since 9-11?
16:10Since 9-11.
16:12Since 9-11.
16:14I was the good guy in my own story.
16:16I was the hero.
16:17I was the one fighting for the injustice of my people.
16:19But the irony of that is we were still a heel team.
16:23You know, Sean would distract the ref.
16:24Sean would slip a bell in.
16:26I know the business side of things.
16:29I knew if I wanted to be there, that's the card I had to play it, and it f***ing worked.
16:33He said if he shoot, he got me, Connor!
16:35Though he reflects the politics of the early 2000s, the concept behind the character goes back to the earliest days of pro wrestling.
16:43There's such a history of the foreign heel that you can go back to Jack Adkinson as Fritz von Erich, evil German heel.
16:53Boy, a blitzer!
16:54Carl von Hess, who served in the U.S. Navy, that's suddenly portraying a Nazi.
17:00Von Hess wearing a snob.
17:01One thing that was easy to do is tap into our tribalism as humans.
17:07It was a very easy, very kind of low-hanging fruit way to create a character that Americans could boo.
17:15But the company is playing with fire, and as history shows, not every attempt to bring politics into wrestling is enjoyed by the audience.
17:23The last time that Vince tried to do something like this, it backfired spectacularly.
17:28In 1991, the idea for WrestleMania was going to be Hulk Hogan, the American hero, defending the WWF and its championship from Sgt. Slaughter, the former G.I. Joe, the former American hero, that had become an Iraqi sympathizer.
17:46Soon, Hulk Hogan, it's gonna be your burial!
17:49Vince McMahon believed they would sell out 100,000 seats, but a few weeks before the event, they had barely sold 10,000 tickets.
17:57It bombed!
18:00The problem was, the Gulf War was ongoing right at that time, and the fans didn't want to see it.
18:08But in 2005, Copani and WWE are committed to making sure that this time, the storyline does work,
18:15with the company insisting he stay in character at all times, even in public.
18:20We always had to maintain, not only the look of the character, but really the personalities of the character.
18:26It got a little shady sometimes.
18:29He got to really experience what it was like being Arab-American in the United States of America in 2004 and 2005.
18:38We experienced what a lot of people were experiencing in America at the time.
18:43When we would travel, Sean always got stopped, because his last name's Daivari, which is a Persian name.
18:49Capani never got stopped.
18:51We were on an airplane, and the look on people's faces, the fear, people in the back of the plane, that were calling their families to tell them that they loved them in case anything happens.
19:03One time, we were in San Francisco, and a young mother with her child takes her completely off the path that had plenty of space to walk clear around us.
19:16The way that people looked at us, you just always had this uneasy feeling that there's potential for something dangerous to happen.
19:23Once he saw what Daivari went through, once he saw just how people were going to see him, I think it changed him.
19:32He was speaking from the heart from those promos.
19:34I'm just like each and every one of you.
19:38I was born right here in this country.
19:41It really made it easy to feel the injustice, because these people didn't even know us.
19:47And the way that they looked at us and they judged us, well, when we got out into the ring, that was how everyone in America looked at us.
19:54USA! USA!
19:56There were a few times where things could have gotten real.
20:01We were in Australia with a bunch of the guys, Gene Sininski, Chris Masters, and a group of young men who were Arab or Middle Eastern approached us.
20:12They knew who we were, and they knew the characters we were portraying, and they were very angry.
20:17They were saying to us, you're not really Muslim, are you?
20:19They were ripping into us, and it became a heated exchange.
20:23It made me realize that there could be people that took offense to these characters.
20:27The fact that a non-Muslim was portraying that character.
20:31I remember, like, thinking to myself, if something happens, we are so outnumbered here that it's either gonna take, like, hitting somebody with a chair for real, or, like, smashing a glass over somebody.
20:44Like, I'm thinking it's gonna get, like, rough.
20:46It de-escalated quickly because I'm surrounded by 6'10 giants.
20:52The irony is that those guys were right.
20:54In our minds, we're playing these characters.
20:56We're generating heat.
20:57We're finding success.
20:59But it was one of the first times.
21:01I had second thoughts about, is this just a character?
21:05And that's when it became too real.
21:07And that's when the lines between wrestling and reality no longer existed.
21:21Tonight, I will have the satisfaction of beating Shawn Michaels!
21:28As Mohamed Hassan rises to the top of the card, Mark's sudden success doesn't sit well with the other wrestlers in the locker room.
21:36That era of wrestling was definitely a tough era to be a new guy.
21:39There was a close, tight-knit group of veterans.
21:41And I remember walking in, and there's just locker room etiquette.
21:44You have to shake everybody's hand.
21:46And I was 24 years old, very green.
21:49And I really didn't know how to behave.
21:52Getting that push to the moon was always a bunch of the guys that felt like you were stealing their spot.
21:57You've had guys who have been on the roster, who have been working their tails off for years, and they're not getting pushed.
22:02There was a lot of jealous and resentment.
22:05Backslide!
22:06They would weed out guys.
22:07Like, if they found a weakness in you, they'd poke at it and poke at it until you either quit or broke down.
22:14They wanted to test you.
22:16Unless you've paid your dues, you're going to have heat.
22:20You do not want heat.
22:21Muhammad Hassan found this out.
22:24Mark's finishing maneuver was a move called the Camel Clutch.
22:31A move that the Iron Sheik made famous in the 80s.
22:34I've never seen anyone get out of this hole.
22:36It made sense for Mark to utilize it 20 years later.
22:39I remember we're in Japan.
22:43It's our final night in Japan.
22:46And Kurt Angle, who I admired and respected, made a comment that Eddie Guerrero is using the Camel Clutch.
22:53Well, that's my finisher.
22:54And he was saying, you know, it's bad for the business that two guys on the same show are using the same move.
22:59And it's your finisher.
23:00It looks weak when Eddie puts it on and someone gets out of it.
23:02It's like, you should say something.
23:04If you use a guy's move in wrestling without their permission, it's worse than if you date their wives.
23:11So, of course, this is one of those moments where I should have kept my mouth shut.
23:15I went up to Eddie and I said, should you be using the Camel Clutch because I'm using it as a finisher?
23:20And he looked at me and he kind of smiled.
23:23He's like, I've always used a Camel Clutch.
23:25He's like, my father invented it.
23:27I was like, of course he did.
23:29So, of course, the boys get a hold of this and it turns into nuclear heat.
23:33It's disrespectful and how dare I.
23:35I mean, I was mortified and I just really felt like I made a mistake that I'm not going to come back from.
23:42I remember calling my father and I'm just like, I just want to fly home.
23:45He's like, you're going to go out there and you're going to face this.
23:48And so, I had to go to wrestling court.
23:51Wrestlers Court is kind of a reason to put somebody on blast and kind of shame them in front of everybody.
23:57Undertaker's a judge, jury, an executioner.
24:00I mean, it sounds like kind of ridiculous, but you never want your whole roster kind of coming down on you.
24:07My consequence for that was buying over $1,000 worth of drinks.
24:12There were certain wrestlers that were pouring the drinks on the floor after I bought them.
24:16Pouring high-quality alcohol in Japan on the floor seems pretty stupid looking back on it now.
24:21But after that, Eddie Guerrero came up to me and very kindly put his hand on my shoulder and said,
24:27I know you didn't mean anything by it.
24:29He gave me a hug and we moved on.
24:32As Mohamed Hassan's notoriety grows, Copani lands his biggest opportunity yet,
24:38sharing the ring with wrestling's most iconic star.
24:41My character was upset that he wasn't given a match at WrestleMania.
24:46And still, I am excluded from the biggest show of the year!
24:52And I remember finding out that we were going to do something with Hulk Hogan.
24:55The red, white and blue!
24:57It was a dream come true moment.
25:00I probably called everybody I'd ever met in my entire life to tell them,
25:04I'm going to be at WrestleMania in the ring with Hulk Hogan.
25:07WrestleMania!
25:10That's like playing baseball against Babe Ruth.
25:13Who gets to freaking wrestle Hogan at WrestleMania?
25:16Oh my God!
25:18Hulk Hogan!
25:19Standing in the center of that ring with Daivari when his music hit
25:22and just watching him work his way down towards the ring,
25:26you could just feel the noise from the crowd lifting you off of the mat.
25:31I had never experienced anything like it.
25:33Look at this!
25:34Look at the Hulkster!
25:35Look at the stroke now!
25:36Imagine being a kid who loves wrestling.
25:40Your dream is to become a wrestler.
25:45And then you find yourself not only working with Hulk Hogan,
25:49but working with Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania.
25:52That's a dream.
25:54This crowd has gone crazy!
25:56Until it becomes a nightmare.
25:58With Hasan established as a top name,
26:01management decides to take the character in a shocking new direction.
26:05With every character, you know there's gonna be evolution.
26:08You don't want your character to be stuck in the mud
26:11because eventually gimmicks run their course.
26:14You got that stupid towel, your stupid gimmick beard.
26:17I think you're a piece of garbage.
26:19Vince and the team decided to lean towards more of this stereotypical way
26:26and become more radicalized.
26:28Let's take this a step further.
26:30These people think he's a terrorist?
26:32Let's make him that.
26:33You're looking at the new icon!
26:36The great Muhammad Hassan!
26:40As the months wore on,
26:43we started doing things that were much more focused on Islam
26:47as opposed to Middle Eastern heritage.
26:49You will be a sacrifice!
26:51Then I feel like that character became insensitive
26:54and it was a complete departure from what we had originally set out to do.
26:58Now I have a bunch of men who are carrying out my bidding.
27:04I really pushed back and I did take that to Stephanie McMahon
27:08who was really the writer that I was working with most on SmackDown
27:11and she kind of put me in my place.
27:13It was, this is a huge opportunity for you.
27:16Basically, shut up. We know what we're doing.
27:19What is that? Oh no.
27:31Looking back, can I see that it was insensitive?
27:34It definitely became insensitive.
27:36The character changed over the course of a few months,
27:39but I don't ever feel like what we did was intentionally distasteful up until the end.
27:46Where things started to go wrong was as he started to gain momentum
27:51and this character started becoming part of the main event scene,
27:55they wanted to try and generate more heat.
27:57Despite Mark's objections to the changes to his character,
28:01he knows he has little power to fight it.
28:05I don't know of anybody that's ever said no to a storyline of any kind
28:09because like when you get the opportunity, you're not going to pass it up.
28:13And that very much was the culture and everybody there was like,
28:17who is this guy to refuse any storyline?
28:19The change in the character really took a toll on me,
28:24and I didn't agree with it, and I think I was pretty vocal about
28:27I didn't like the direction of the character.
28:29There came to a point with Shawn Michaels,
28:32before I put him in the camel clutch,
28:34I took my thumb and...
28:40Undertaker does the same thing, but the context in which I did it,
28:43it symbolized a beheading, which was a horrific and tragic thing
28:47that was happening in the Middle East with American citizens.
28:52To be honest with you, at the time, it seemed only natural.
28:57I never saw how his character developed and thought,
29:01wow, they should not go here at the time. Never. Once.
29:05To me, it was like, ah, yeah, that makes sense.
29:07He's going to get so much heat for this.
29:10I don't really know exactly whose decision it was to do that.
29:13I know it wasn't mine.
29:14I think one of the reasons why the character started being
29:16changed is because they were working up to a program with Batista
29:20and The Undertaker, who are not only two giant men,
29:24but they're also two giant personas and characters in the WWE.
29:28At some point, they were planning on putting
29:31one of the world championships on him.
29:33Vince was going to push him to the moon.
29:35The day of the dead man has come and gone.
29:39The angle that we were working with The Undertaker was going to build to a number one contenders match.
29:50And so I was told that the idea was that I would beat The Undertaker,
29:55I would be the number one contender to face Batista.
29:59And it would be the Arab defeating the reigning champion Batista in Washington, D.C.
30:06Kind of like the big F you to America.
30:08That was the plan that was ran by me.
30:10Obviously, it didn't turn out that way.
30:12It was Daivari versus The Undertaker.
30:15Sean got the crap kicked out of him.
30:17Toad, Scott!
30:19Bottle driver!
30:20Walk about a sacrifice.
30:22On the day the episode is set to broadcast, real-world tragedy strikes.
30:27People streaming out of the station, covered in blood.
30:30This was a highly sophisticated, coordinated terrorist attack.
30:34The London terrorist bombing that occurred on July 7th that led to many, many casualties broke on a Thursday morning.
30:43So you have worldwide focus on this terrorist attack.
30:47And SmackDown was set to air later that night with this very controversial angle.
30:53So in the immediate aftermath, WWE decides it's going to run as is and they were going to add a crawl throughout the show,
31:01essentially giving a warning to the audience.
31:04I think they underestimated the amount of scrutiny it was going to receive.
31:08The realism and the imagery all got tied into what had happened in London.
31:15It was Daivari versus The Undertaker.
31:17And so Sean sacrificed himself.
31:20And I had just this evil look on my face.
31:22Then I dropped to my knees and I raised my hands and say praise Allah.
31:28And suddenly men come storming out from behind me.
31:31Hit the ring.
31:34I do this.
31:35The beheading symbol.
31:37Soak him.
31:38Soak him.
31:39Oh my god.
31:40Like a steel wire.
31:41I don't know what it is.
31:42And then I come up.
31:43I get over The Undertaker.
31:45Hey no!
31:48And then I choke him out in a camel clutch.
31:51His eyes roll back in the back of his head.
31:53And now you started really walking that line of just like, is this guy a terrorist at the end of the day?
32:01Terrorists behead people.
32:03And they had done it to a journalist, Daniel Pearl, a couple of years earlier.
32:08Also, one year prior, this American, Nick Berg, had been kidnapped and then was beheaded on camera by five masked men, the same number that WWE incorporated for this angle.
32:21The masked men, they were almost like my soldiers.
32:24And I was the leader of this Islamic fundamentalist cult.
32:27And then Sean ended up becoming our martyr.
32:29Look at this.
32:30They're holding him up.
32:31Like a sacrifice.
32:32Like it's a martyr or something.
32:33He's given what had been recognized as a Islamic martyr's funeral in the sense that the men in masks are carrying him overhead, sacrificing his life for me.
32:43That was really the scene that started that controversy.
32:47It was across the line.
32:48This was really happening at that moment to Americans and American allies.
32:53And people didn't want to see that kind of shit on the wrestling program.
32:57And so this set off a firestorm of backlash.
33:02UPN wanted nothing to do with this character in light of the controversy.
33:07We had heat with sponsors, with Arab groups.
33:12Everybody just said enough's enough.
33:14And it was framed in how insensitive the WWE is using real life tragic situations to sell the story.
33:22I didn't agree with what we were doing at that time.
33:25I felt like we needed to scale back.
33:27In this particular instance, I told my boss that I think this was the wrong way to go.
33:33And I didn't want to have anything to do with it.
33:35I was demoted.
33:36I was stripped of almost all my responsibilities.
33:38All because I spoke up and said that I think this was wrong.
33:42As an American, I thought it was wrong.
33:44And then what happened was pressure started to come down from the network.
33:49And eventually UPN put enough pressure on WWE and they realized that they needed to kill the character altogether.
33:56This could indeed be Muhammad Hassan's last match.
34:07With the media and fans in an uproar, Muhammad Hassan draws the wrong kind of attention.
34:14The network was really worried about it and they said,
34:17take these characters off of SmackDown.
34:19I think with the sponsors and the threats that they had made,
34:22it slowly deteriorated into something that I had realized was probably going to end my career.
34:27Chef Boyardee doesn't want to air an ad right after you martyr a wrestler.
34:32If there was no London bombing, the direction we were headed, it would have become tasteless.
34:36Muhammad Hassan went from this real life portrayal of an upset American,
34:40judge me for me, to now relying more on his Islamic background to get heat.
34:46I assure you that that sacrifice will not go without its reward,
34:50but a sacrifice for the greater good.
34:53I thought it was ironic that now we're stereotyping Middle Easterns
34:57when we started off the character as being against that stereotype
35:00and trying really hard to make Muhammad Hassan a real character.
35:04Someone who was born here, went to school here, has a family here.
35:07I, for one, will not embrace a racist nation.
35:13Right around that time, I wanted to buy a house.
35:16And so I walk into a room off of catering and it's just me and there's Johnny Ace,
35:22the head of talent relations at the time.
35:24And I remember going and saying, Johnny, you know,
35:27I'm just about to put an offer in on a house back home.
35:30Like, what's going to happen?
35:32And he looked me dead in the eye and he said, don't buy the house.
35:37And that's when I knew that we're not going to be fighting this, that we were done.
35:44With sponsors and the network pressuring the company to drop the character,
35:48Muhammad Hassan's fate is sealed.
35:51We weren't allowed to be on TV.
35:53We weren't allowed to be on SmackDown or Raw.
35:56The only thing we were allowed to do was a pay-per-view.
36:00My family was sitting in the front row in Buffalo, New York, where I went to school,
36:04where I first got the bug to want to be a wrestler.
36:07Everything kind of came full circle.
36:09And that was the last time I was going to be in a WWE ring.
36:12I mean, if anybody was going to take me out, having to be The Undertaker was an honor.
36:23My character was beat brutally.
36:29And then I was powerbombed through the stage.
36:33This move called The Last Ride.
36:36And he launches me, and when he drops me, I'm coming down at a much steeper angle than I anticipated.
36:43Stop this!
36:44No, no, no, no!
36:45Hit so hard on that single crash pad on my neck that I flipped over and landed clean on my feet like an acrobat.
36:52So they put me down, they cover me with cable wires, put blood out.
36:55I don't know how often that's happened where a character has been murdered on national television brutally.
37:01And with that, Muhammad Hassan was never seen again.
37:05That was it.
37:09And you know, the weird thing about that was, typically after a show you go back to the hotel.
37:14I was in Buffalo and I was home.
37:16So I got in my car and when the show was over, I drove home.
37:20And it was, I couldn't even begin to tell you the thoughts that I was feeling.
37:25I don't know if it was relief, sadness, disappointment.
37:35I definitely was heartbroken by what had happened and heartbroken that everything that I had spent so much time and energy and dreamed and everything that I had worked for was just gone.
37:53It made no sense.
37:55He did what he was told because he was being paid money and he had a dream job that he wanted to fulfill.
38:01And what they told him to do backfired.
38:04They threw the baby and the bathwater out the window and continued on rather than tell Vince McMahon,
38:09man, you this guy up, you ought to make it up to him.
38:12He did everything he was told.
38:14He was great at his job.
38:16And they let him go for it.
38:18The end of my career with the WWE launched me to a few years of my life where I had no direction and I was lost.
38:26And I didn't know what I was going to do and I knew I would never get back what I had.
38:31And I couldn't, I couldn't rationalize it and I couldn't find reason for it.
38:37I do feel like wrestling turned its back on me and I definitely turned my back on wrestling.
38:42And I didn't want to look back at all.
38:45I needed to change and I didn't really know how.
38:49Fired from WWE and living in Los Angeles, Mark Copani steps away from the world of wrestling.
39:04I was pretty secluded in LA.
39:07In the moment, it was survival mode.
39:09It was living day by day.
39:11It was a level of depression that I didn't recognize at the time.
39:15I don't want to say hopelessness, but just being lost.
39:19And nothing was really going my way.
39:22Depressed, upset, frustrated.
39:26You're on top of the world one week, the next week you're without a job.
39:30Once that tide of momentum turns against you, it's kind of hard to get it to swing the other way.
39:36The character came in so hot and had so much attention that nobody thought it was going to be believable to bring me back as anybody else.
39:44It's always like that one thing that sticks in people's minds.
39:48You know, oh, that's the terrorist guy.
39:51Sadly, just a waste of a talent, really, because he had so much potential to be like that big star.
39:57One of the defining moments for me with that is I had come home for the holidays just a bit of a wreck.
40:06You know, I was running low on money.
40:08I remember being exhausted and just saying to myself, like, you need to get some sleep.
40:15And then the thought occurred to me, what if you don't wake up?
40:21What difference would it make?
40:22Like, what difference do you make?
40:25How many days have you wasted?
40:28And kind of just confronted with the reality of where I was, not where I wanted to be.
40:39And that was the moment that I decided I needed to make a radical change in my life.
40:43And it was a few months later that I was going to college, working nights at UPS.
40:47And it was very humbling.
40:49And I found that fire, that work ethic, that dedication, that passion.
40:54And I focused it in another direction.
40:56I got my teaching certification, and I got my master's degree.
40:58I got a job teaching.
40:59Then I became a principal.
41:01I didn't stop, and I haven't stopped since.
41:04So I don't waste days anymore.
41:08It wasn't until later that I realized I was avoiding the pain and the heartbreak that I had felt because of what had happened.
41:15With Mohamed Hassan behind him, Marcus had years to reflect on the experience of being one of wrestling's most controversial villains.
41:24It probably wasn't until almost a decade later that I really started to appreciate the journey that I had had and the career that I had had, regardless of how it had ended.
41:34And then at that point, it didn't matter how it ended.
41:37It's always easy to say, what if?
41:39I think Mohamed Hassan's outcome was set in stone from his very first promo.
41:44This is no longer the land of the free.
41:47And it has nothing to do with talent, skill, ability, appearance.
41:51It has to do with the culture we lived in.
41:54I feel bad for Mark because the man was talented.
41:57The man was good.
41:58The man was gifted.
41:59I will fulfill my destiny as the first Arab American to be a champion.
42:06I made the decisions to play that character and I've had to live with it.
42:09And so I don't have any ill feelings about it.
42:11I don't hold grudges.
42:13It's just the fact that I got to experience that and I got to live that.
42:16And I had dreamed it for so long to make that dream a reality.
42:21This is something that I am very proud of.
42:24Either way, that character was not long for TV.
42:27The world was changing around us and eventually the world looked like it does today where that type of stereotypical insensitive portrayal of any nationality in this country is frowned upon now and it should be.
42:40Sean is an agent in the WWE now.
42:45Sean has a great mind for wrestling and he just gets the storytelling aspect of wrestling.
42:49I talk to Sean all the time and he's doing very well and I couldn't be prouder of him.
42:53To be honest, it worked out better for Mark because in the intervening 20 years, he's had a normal job in a normal place.
43:02He's highly thought of in the community.
43:04He's probably been better off in the long run than all the crazy shit he would have gone through in 20 years in wrestling.
43:10So I'm happy for him.
43:12If I could go back and do it all again, I absolutely would do it.
43:15I'm the man I am today because of those experiences.
43:18Muhammad Hassan didn't define who I am.
43:21That character stays in 2004, 2005.
43:24Everything that's happened since is me.
43:27Now, I'm the director of human resources in a small city school district.
43:32And I impact over 3,000 kids every day.
43:34And the only way I had gotten to this point is because of the epic failure that I had had.
43:39And that realization that it doesn't matter what your dreams were, it doesn't matter how it ended, you always have a second chance.
43:46I don't think my best days are behind me.
43:48I think that they're in front of me.
43:50I'm still looking forward to doing some big things.
43:53Even as Matt Pathens University.
43:54He's strength.
43:55He's a great boss.
43:56We don't have a joint that goes through yesterday.
43:57I'm not sure what's happening with a big deal with him.
43:58Rock and climb down.
43:59I'm very sorry.
44:00Let's see you in the next part.
44:01And look at the beautiful city of India and roll down.
44:02These Gillings are the disabilities that do not purchase that.
44:04And hopefully their path you would have enjoyed.
44:05What do you see?
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