Original subtitles

Introducing first, Mark Magnus.

In the early 2000s, Mark Coppani was a young wrestler with a dream.

When I got the phone call that I was going to be for the WWE, I knew it was

going to be special. You see, I'm the future of wrestling.

But when they pitched me the idea, I was very nervous.

You're looking at the great Muhammad Hassan.

What?

I said, but he's Italian from Syracuse. Well, for us, he's going to be a Middle

Easterner. But Coppani's path to stardom proved extremely controversial as WWE

cast him as a shocking new villain. We are three years removed from 9 -11.

And it's still a fresh wound.

There was so much discrimination going on, so it was just instant heat.

We're labeled terrorists!

Terrorists! I'm a terrorist.

He was stoking a lot of prejudices.

America does not wish goodwill towards all men.

Mohammed Hassan, what he was saying wasn't silly. What he was saying was

And no one wants to hear that they're wrong. Those people wanted to kill him.

But it takes on an entirely different level once the London bombing occurs.

A series of terrorist attacks in the capital this morning. That's when things

started to go downhill.

It was a ride straight to the top that ended in sudden disaster.

The character started to become more radicalized.

And suddenly he had a crew of terrorist henchmen.

That's what blew everything up.

They underestimated the amount of scrutiny it was going to receive.

The network was saying, we're not going to air SmackDown if this character is

not written off.

Instead of it being a footnote in his career.

It became the last chapter.

Everything that I had worked for was just gone.

It was that quick.

The rise, the fall, and then the rebirth.

Following WWE's unparalleled success in the late 1990s, In the early 2000s, the

company struggled to find a footing in a new era.

The WWE was in a transition period. They had lost Stone Cold Steve Austin to

injury and retirement. They'd lost The Rock to the movies.

And they were trying to find their next major superstars.

Ohio Valley Wrestling was a local wrestling promotion and training center

in Louisville, Kentucky to serve as a developmental or a training program for

aspiring WWE wrestlers. That's the trajectory that Brock Lesnar had taken

John Cena and Randy Orton and Batista.

If you had the athletic background, the size, the personality, we could show you

how to be a successful pro wrestler.

I'm Jim Cornette, and I was one of the trainers of the wrestler that would come

to be known as Muhammad Hassan.

When Mark Capani came in, he's 21 years old. He was in good shape. He had good

looks. And you could see that he had a great amount of potential.

I was always athletic, and I always played sports. So wrestling kind of

all of that for me.

Feast your eyes and fantasize on this year's model.

Mark's character was, like, smug, arrogant.

I'm better than you in every category at that thing.

My name's Chris Mordetzky, but you probably know me better as Chris Masters

Masterpiece. Mark was the OVW champion at one point.

Jim Cornette booked Mark in a way that would help give him an opportunity to

signed in WWE.

In two years, he had gone from the lowest guy on the totem pole to a main

wrestler in OVW.

And all of a sudden, I get a call from the WWE office saying they wanted to

him an Arab.

I said, but he's Italian from Syracuse.

How is this going to work?

Jim Cornette told me what they were looking for.

Didn't really know how I felt about it at the time.

But this is a big opportunity, and not many people have a character that's

handed to them. So there was no doubt about it, I was going to do the

My name's Mark Apani, and in 2004 and 2005, I played the character Muhammad

Hassan on WWE.

Mark was very dark -complected. He has the dark hair.

He could look like a stereotypical Arab villain in a movie.

Oh yeah, Jimmy, it's going to be that good.

So now Mark Magnus is no more.

And instead, he is Muhammad Hassan.

Praise Allah.

When 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.

The character of Muhammad Hassan is a direct response to the horrific and

events of just a few years earlier.

We have a breaking news story to tell you about. Apparently, a plane has just

crashed into the World Trade Center here in New York City.

I remember I was walking home from class, and I hear people talking, and

really processing what they're saying. But I get home.

And I turn the TV on, and I see the devastation.

And then it hit me. This wasn't an accident. This was an attack.

At the time, no one knew what was going to happen. It was very uncertain.

And I think one of the things that wrestling did for me is when they went

air right after 9 -11, and the show must go on.

We will not live our lives in fear.

It was a defining moment that wrestling could have such a positive impact on me

when I was feeling so negative.

When I was scared, when I didn't know what was going to happen, I put

on, and for those few hours, it didn't matter.

The WWE was really rallying behind this patriotism, and that would embed the

country coming out of 9 -11.

and inevitably was going to seep into its programming.

But Osama bin Laden, the exiled terrorist, is involved, if not totally

responsible for, this coordinated attack.

Post -September 11th, there was so much discrimination going on. You couldn't

really escape it in the United States around that time. A lot of people would

think terrorist automatically.

We have four basic emotions, anger being one of them. Transform that into

wrestling terms.

Open that wound every time you possibly can.

My name is Maven Huffman. I wrestled in the WWE alongside Muhammad Hassan.

In 2004, 9 -11 is still fresh on the minds of a lot of people.

Once we saw Muhammad come out, we just were like, ugh, he's going to get heat.

We will spread the word of Allah to all you despicable infidels. The times we

were in, we didn't need an arrogant.

Italian. We needed someone who could just garner the hatred of the fans.

Along with the new Muhammad Hassan was going to be Sean Daivari.

Sean Daivari is an independent wrestler that came out of Chicago and was someone

that was assigned to be the second to Muhammad Hassan and was able to speak

Farsi.

They called me up, if I'd like to offer you a job. I met Mark Magnus, who was

Muhammad, and he told me that they were going to be like two Arabs.

Praise Allah!

Before being introduced to the WWE audience,

Coppani and Daivari test out their new character in OVW.

We started trying things out at house shows, and we didn't know the direction

the character was going to take.

This was a Vince McMahon idea.

And whenever Vince McMahon had an idea, you knew it was going to go farther than

almost anything else.

An illegal war is being waged on innocent people.

At one point, it was very stereotypical, like we're going to raise the price of

oil. We were going out there just trying different things to see how much heat

we could generate from the crowd.

You are a traitor to my country!

I grew up in the era with the Hulk Hogan and Ricky Steamboat and Randy Savage.

It was these larger -than -life characters.

Wrestling has always skimmed the surface of political events in the modern

world.

Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkov were cartoony with the accent.

And I don't think Muhammad Hassan was any different when we started.

It wasn't until we started filming the vignettes, and that's when the character

took shape.

WWE decides to introduce the character through pre -recorded segments that will

air in anticipation of his in -ring debut.

My name is Muhammad Hassan.

Vignettes were a critical part of storytelling for WWE.

My name is Michael Leonardi. I am a former writer and producer for World

Wrestling Entertainment.

It was our opportunity to present to the world this new character. And it played

a huge role because it would really help them get off to a great start.

Don't confuse me with acts of terrorism here in America.

That's when it clicked for both Sean and I that this wasn't a foreign character.

This was an American character of Muslim or Arab descent.

9 -11 changed everything.

For me and my people. Who, rightfully so, is disgruntled. For Arab Americans,

there is no equality.

And discouraged and angry about what has been going on with his family and his

community since 9 -11.

But because we're of Arab descent, we are singled out.

These were really set up to highlight situations in which his character would

experience biases or prejudice.

Muhammad Hassan is presented in the light that just because of my

does not make me a terrorist.

He was the antithesis of all of the stereotypes.

But the day before Hassan's first appearance, controversy stoked.

On an episode of Sunday Night Heat, you had your broadcasters Todd Grisham and

Ivory teeing up Muhammad Hassan's debut.

Also tomorrow night, Muhammad Hassan makes his debut in the ring on Raw.

I'm just asking, how are you going to get to Huntsville?

I'm driving.

Good, because I don't want you to be flying. And right there, the fact that

we're going to make a...

flight joke, I think it kind of sets the tone for what the audience can expect.

With expectations riding high, Mark Coppani prepares to make his entrance as

Muhammad Hassan.

I finally debuted in Huntsville, Alabama with Mick Foley.

I was nervous.

I felt like I was going to throw up.

I remember we were really not 100 % sure how they're going to take this

character. It was very different.

of the line for us. Mick Foley's out there just giving a riveting promo about

the war in Afghanistan and supporting our troops.

Supporting the troops goes way beyond any kind of political affiliation.

Now I come out.

Man, as soon as that music

hits and as soon as you step through that curtain, it's just, it's go time.

business.

And I interrupt Mick Follin and I am contradicting everything he says because

this is my truth.

It's people like us that are the real victims of this war.

None of you people are real patriots. And instantly you are telling the

if there was any confusion from these vignettes, you are instructed to hate

Mohammed Hassan. I am sick of hearing you express your admiration for these

troops. These gutless cowards! Now you're pissing me off!

Here was somebody very clearly being presented as a villain because he was

attacking Americans.

I don't think Vince McMahon was trying to tell a complex story.

Arab -American, disgruntled, anti -American.

Boo. Heal. He may even be justified in what he is saying, but he is anti

-American. And I feel your patriotism.

At every airport.

And especially right now. It worked with the fans because they really did not

like somebody coming out and telling them that America didn't have all the

answers.

When I came back from the curtain, I think a lot of people were very

And I think a lot of people were very excited about the potential of this

character.

I knew right away they were going to push him to the moon.

He's got the look, he's got the skill, he's got the knowledge.

Hi, this is Gene Snitsky, and I used to work with Muhammad Hassan.

I can't remember anybody getting that much heat since the Iron Sheik.

The animosity of people.

Like, they literally wanted to grab him and beat him.

It's crazy.

Over a wrestling character.

He just had that aura about him to where people just didn't only hate him, they

wanted to kill him.

To all the men and women of the United States Armed Forces now in the Middle

East, the peace of a troubled world and the hopes of an oppressed people now

depend on you.

In 2004, our nation was engulfed in a war in the Middle East.

We're putting shows on in Iraq.

The WWE has returned to Iraq to celebrate the holidays with each and

of you.

Patriotism is huge in every aspect of our lives.

Add wrestling to it, it just amps up the volume tenfold.

So then when they heard this guy who might look

like one of the terrorists going out basically saying, I had nothing to do

9 -11.

You don't really care what he's going to say.

New people have no idea what it's like to be me. They booed because it was

showing a mirror to the face of the American public and the hypocrisy and

prejudice. America has literally ganged up on me and our Arab American brothers.

That had really been pushed forward against the Muslim people in this

the time. And people don't like to be shown their own flaws.

Deep down inside your hearts.

Every single one of you is prejudiced.

Growing up, I was always raised to not judge people by the color of their skin.

My father told me about some of the struggles that my grandfather had. Being

Italian -American, it made me more aware and sympathetic to what Arab -Americans

were feeling at the time. These were people who had lived here, who had

assimilated to this country.

The same thing you see with the Japanese in World War II. It was completely

unfair. It's disgraceful. And so when 9 -11 happened, my concern was what's

going to happen next. And that kind of became my catchphrase since 9 -11.

Since 9 -11? Since 9 -11. Since 9 -11.

I was the good guy in my own story. I was the hero. I was the one fighting for

the injustice of my people. But the irony of that is we were still a heel

You know, Sean would distract the ref. Sean would slip a bell in.

I know the business side of things. I knew if I wanted to be there, that's the

card I had to play, and it worked.

Though he reflects the politics of the early 2000s, the concept behind the

character goes back to the earliest days of pro wrestling.

There's such a history of the foreign heel that you can go back to Jack

as Fritz von Erich, evil German heel.

Carl Von Hesse, who served in the U .S. Navy, that's suddenly portraying a Nazi.

One thing that was easy to do is tap into our tribalism as humans.

It was a very easy, very kind of low -hanging fruit way to create a character

that Americans could boo.

But the company is playing with fire, and as history shows, not every attempt

bring politics into wrestling is enjoyed by the audience.

The last time that Vince tried to do something like this, it backfired

spectacularly. In 1991, the idea for WrestleMania was going to be Hulk Hogan,

the American hero, defending the WWF and its championship from Sergeant

Slaughter, the former G .I. Joe, the former American hero.

that had become an Iraqi sympathizer. Soon, Hosh Hogan, it's going to be your

burial. Vince McMahon believed they would sell out 100 ,000 seats, but a few

weeks before the event, they had barely sold 10 ,000 tickets.

It bombed.

The problem was the Gulf War was ongoing right at that time, and the fans didn't

want to see it.

But in 2005, Coppani and WWE are committed to making sure that this time

storyline does work, with the company insisting he stay in character at all

times, even in public.

We always had to maintain not only the look of the character, but really the

personalities of the character. So it got a little shady sometimes.

He got to really experience what it was like being Arab American in the United

States of America in 2004 and 2005.

We experienced what a lot of people were experiencing in America at the time.

When we would travel, Sean always got stopped because his last name's Daivari,

which is a Persian name.

Kapani never got stopped.

We 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 love them in case anything happens.

One 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.

The way that people looked at us, you just always had this uneasy feeling that

there's potential for something dangerous to happen.

Once he saw what Daivari went through, once he saw...

just how people were going to see him, I think it changed him. He was speaking

from the heart from those promos. I'm just like each and every one of you. I

born right here in this country.

It really made it easy to feel the injustice because these people didn't

know us. And 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.

There were a few times where things could have gotten real.

We were in Australia with a bunch of the guys, Gene Sininsky, Chris Masters, and

a group of young men who were Arab or Middle Eastern approached us.

They knew who we were, and they knew the characters we were portraying, and they

were very angry. They were saying to us, you're not really Muslim, are you?

Like, they were ripping into us, and it became a heated exchange.

Made me realize that there could be people that took offense to these

characters. The fact that a non -Muslim was portraying that character.

I remember thinking to myself, if something happens, we are so outnumbered

that it's either going to take hitting somebody with a chair for real or

smashing a glass over somebody. I'm thinking it's going to get rough.

It de -escalated quickly because I'm surrounded by 6 '10 giants.

The irony is that those guys were right. In our minds, we're playing these

characters, we're generating heat, we're finding success, but it was one of the

first times I had second thought about, is this just a character?

And that's when it became too real, and that's when the lines between wrestling

and reality no longer existed.

As Muhammad Hassan rises to the top of the card, Mark's sudden success doesn't

sit well with the other wrestlers in the locker room. That era of wrestling was

definitely a tough era to be a new guy. There was a close, tight -knit group of

veterans, and...

I remember walking in, and there's just lacrimatic. You have to shake

everybody's hand.

I was 24 years old, very green, and I really didn't know how to behave.

Getting that push to the moon, there was always a bunch of the guys that felt

like you were stealing their spot.

You've had guys who have been on the roster who have been working their tails

off for years, and they're not getting pushed.

There was a lot of jealous and resentment.

They would weed out guys if they found a weakness in you.

They'd poke at it and poke at it until you either quit or broke down.

They wanted to test you.

Unless you've paid your dues, you're going to have heat. You do not want

Muhammad Hassan found this out.

Mark's finishing maneuver was a move called the camel clutch, a move that the

Iron Sheik made famous in the 80s. I've never seen anyone get out of this hole.

It made sense for Mark to utilize it 20 years later.

I remember, we're in Japan.

And Kurt Angle, who I admired and respected, made a comment that Eddie

is using the camel clutch. Well, that's my finisher.

And he was saying, you know, it's bad for the business that two guys on the

show are using the same move, and it's your finisher. It looks weak when Eddie

puts it on and someone gets out of it.

So you should say something.

If you use a guy's move in wrestling without their permission, it's worse

if you date their wife.

So, of course, this is one of those moments where I should have kept my

shut. I went up to Eddie, and I said, should you be using the camel clutch

because I'm using it as a finisher?

And he looked at me, and he kind of smiled. He's like, I've always used the

camel clutch. He's like, my father invented it.

I was like, of course he did. So, of course, the boys get a hold of this, and

turns into nuclear heat.

It's disrespectful, and how dare I?

And I was mortified, and I just really felt like I made a mistake that I'm not

going to come back from.

I remember calling my father, and I'm just like, I just want to fly home. He

like, you're going to go out there, and you're going to face this.

And so I had to go to wrestling court.

Wrestler's court is kind of a reason to put somebody on blast and kind of shame

them in front of everybody.

Undertaker is a judge, jury, and executioner.

I mean, it sounds like kind of ridiculous, but you never want your

kind of coming down on you.

My consequence for that was buying over $1 ,000 worth of drinks.

There were certain wrestlers that were pouring the drinks on the floor after I

bought them.

Pouring high -quality alcohol in Japan on the floor seems pretty stupid looking

back on it now.

But after that, Eddie Guerrero came up to me and very kindly put his hand on my

shoulder and said, I know you didn't mean anything by it.

We moved on.

As Muhammad Hassan's notoriety grows, Kopani lands his biggest opportunity

sharing the ring with wrestling's most iconic star.

My character was upset that he wasn't given a match at WrestleMania.

And still, I am excluded from the biggest show of the year!

And I remember finding out that we were going to do something with Hulk Hogan.

It was a dream come true moment.

I probably called everybody I'd ever met in my entire life to tell them I'm

going to be at WrestleMania in the ring with Hulk Hogan.

WrestleMania.

That's like playing baseball against Babe Ruth.

Who gets to freaking wrestle Hogan at WrestleMania?

Standing in the center of that ring with Daivari when his music hit and just

watching him work his way down towards the ring.

You could just feel the noise from the crowd lifting you off of the mat. I had

never experienced anything like it.

Imagine being a kid who loves wrestling.

Your dream is to become a wrestler.

And then you find yourself not only working with Hulk Hogan, but working

Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania.

That's a dream.

until it becomes a nightmare.

With Hassan established as a top name, management decides to take the character

in a shocking new direction.

With every character, you know there's going to be evolution.

You don't want your character to be stuck in the mud because eventually

run their course.

You got that stupid towel, your stupid gimmick beard.

I think you're a piece of garbage.

Vince and the team decided to lean towards... more of the stereotypical way

become more radicalized. Let's take this a step further. People think he's a

terrorist. Let's make him that.

You're looking at the new icon, the great Mohammed Hassan.

As the months wore on, we started doing things that were much more focused on

Islam as opposed to Middle Eastern heritage.

You will be a sacrifice.

And then I feel like that character became insensitive, and it was a

departure from what we had originally set out to do.

Now I have a bunch of men who are carrying out my bidding.

I really pushed back, and I did take that to Stephanie McMahon, who was

the writer that I was working with most on SmackDown. And she kind of put me in

my place. It was, this is a huge opportunity for you.

Basically, shut up. We know what we're doing.

Looking back, can I see that it was insensitive? It definitely became

insensitive. The character changed over the course of a few months, but I don't

ever feel like what we did was intentionally distasteful up until the

Where things started to go wrong was as he started to gain momentum and this

character started becoming part of the main event scene, they wanted to try and

generate more heat.

Despite Mark's objections to the changes to his character, he knows he has

little power to fight it.

I don't know of anybody that's ever said no to a storyline of any kind. Because

it's like, when you get the opportunity, you're not going to pass it up.

And that very much was the culture. And everybody there was like, who is this

guy to refuse any storyline?

The change in the character really took a toll on me. And I didn't agree with

it. And I think I was pretty vocal about I didn't like the direction of the

character. There came to a point with Shawn Michaels, before I put him in the

camel clutch, I took my thumb and...

Well, Undertaker does the same thing, but the context in which I did it, it

symbolized a beheading, which was a horrific and tragic thing that was

in the Middle East with American citizens.

To be honest with you, at the time, it seemed only natural.

I never saw how his character developed and thought, wow, they should not go

here at the time. Never. Once. To me, it was like, ah, yeah, that makes sense.

He's going to get so much heat for this.

I don't really know exactly whose decision it was to do that. I know it

mine. I think one of the reasons why the character started to change is because

they were working up to a program with Batista and The Undertaker, who are not

only two giant men, but they're also two giant personas and characters in the

WWE. At some point, they were planning on putting one of the world

on him. Vince was going to push him to the moon.

The day of the dead man has come and gone.

The angle that we were working with The Undertaker was going to

build to a number one contenders match.

And so I was told that the idea was that I would beat The Undertaker, I would be

the number one contender to face Batista, and it would be The Arab

reigning champion Batista.

In Washington, D .C., kind of like the big F .U. to America, that was the plan

that was ran by me.

Obviously, it didn't turn out that way, but it was Daivari versus The

Undertaker. Sean got the crap kicked out of him.

Talk about a sacrifice.

On the day the episode is set to broadcast, real -world tragedy strike.

People streaming out of the station covered in blood.

This was a highly sophisticated, coordinated terrorist attack.

The London terrorist bombing that occurred on July 7th that led to many,

casualties broke on a Thursday morning. So you have worldwide focus on this

terrorist attack.

And SmackDown was set to air later that night with this very controversial

angle. So in the immediate aftermath, WWE decides, It's going to run as is,

they were going to add a crawl throughout the show, essentially giving

to the audience.

I think they underestimated the amount of scrutiny it was going to receive.

The realism and the imagery all got tied into what had happened in London.

It was Daivari versus The Undertaker, and so Sean sacrificed himself, and I

just this evil look on my face that I dropped to my knees.

And I raise my hand and say, praise Allah, and suddenly men come storming

from behind me.

Hit the ring.

I do this, the beheading symbol.

And then I come up. I get over the

Undertaker.

And then I choke him out in a camel clutch.

And now you started really walking that line of just like, is this guy a

terrorist at the end of the day?

Terrorists behead people.

And they had done it to a journalist, Daniel Pearl, a couple of years earlier.

Also, one year prior, this American, Nick Byrne, had been kidnapped.

and then was beheaded on camera by five masked men, the same number that WWE

incorporated for this angle.

The masked men, they were almost like my soldiers, and I was the leader of this

Islamic fundamentalist cult.

And then Sean ended up becoming our martyr.

He's given what had been recognized as an Islamic martyr's funeral in the sense

that the men in masks are carrying him overhead, sacrificing his life for me.

That was really the scene that started that controversy.

It was across the line. This was really happening at that moment to Americans

and American allies.

And people didn't want to see that kind of shit on their wrestling program.

And so this set off a firestorm of backlash.

UPN wanted nothing to do with this character in light of the controversy.

We had heat with sponsors, with Arab groups.

Everybody just said, enough is enough.

And it was framed in how insensitive the WWE is, using real -life tragic

situations to sell a story. I didn't agree with what we were doing at that

I felt like we needed to scale back.

In this particular instance... I told my boss that I think this was the wrong

way to go, and I didn't want to have anything to do with it. I was demoted. I

was stripped of almost all my responsibilities, all because I spoke up

that I think this was wrong.

As an American, I thought it was wrong.

And then what happened was pressure started to come down from the network,

eventually UPN put enough pressure on WWE, and they realized that they needed

kill the character altogether.

This could indeed be Muhammad Hassan.

Last match.

With the media and fans in an uproar, Muhammad Hassan draws the wrong kind of

attention. The network was really worried about it, and they said, take

characters off of SmackDown. I think with the sponsors and the threats that

had made, it slowly deteriorated into something that I had realized was

going to end my career.

Chef, we are D doesn't want to air an ad right after you martyr a wrestler.

If there was no London bombing, the direction we were headed, it would have

become tasteless. Muhammad Hassan went from this real life portrayal of an

American. Judge me for me.

To now relying more on his Islamic background to get heat.

I assure you that that sacrifice will not go without its reward.

But it's sacrifice for the greater good.

I thought it was.

Ironic that now we're stereotyping Middle Easterns when we started off the

character as being against that stereotype and trying really hard to

Muhammad Hassan a real character. Someone who was born here, went to

here, has a family here.

I, for one, will not embrace a racist nation.

Right around that time, I wanted to buy a house.

And so I walk into a room off of catering, and it's just me and there's

A, the head of talent relations at the time.

And I remember going and saying, Johnny, you know, I'm just about to put an

offer in on a house back home.

What's going to happen? And he looked me dead in the eye and he said, don't buy

the house.

And that's when I knew that we're not going to be fighting this, that we were

done.

With sponsors and the network pressuring the company to drop the character,

Muhammad Hassan's fate is sealed.

We weren't allowed to be on TV.

We weren't allowed to be on SmackDown or Raw. The only thing we were allowed to

do was a pay -per -view.

My family was sitting in the front row in Buffalo, New York, where I went to

school, where I first got the bug to want to be a wrestler.

Everything kind of came full circle.

And that was the last time I was going to be in a WWE ring.

I mean, if anybody was going to take me out, having to be The Undertaker was an

honor.

My character was beat brutally.

And then I was powerbombed through the stage.

This move called the last ride. And he launches me, and when he drops me, I'm

coming down at a much steeper angle than I anticipated.

Hit so hard on that single crash pad on my neck that I flipped over and landed

clean on my feet like an acrobat.

So they put me down, they covered me with cable wires, put blood out.

I don't know how often that's happened where a character has been murdered on

national television brutally.

And with that, Muhammad Hassan was never seen again.

That was it. And, you know, the weird thing about that was typically after a

show, you go back to the hotel. I was in Buffalo, and I was home.

So I got in my car, and when the show was over, I drove home.

I couldn't even begin to tell you the thoughts that I was feeling.

I don't know if it was relief, sadness, disappointment.

I 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.

It made no sense.

He did what he was told because he was being paid money and he had a dream job

that he wanted to fulfill.

And what they told him to do backfired. They threw the baby and the bathwater

out the window and continued on rather than tell Vince McMahon, you f*** this

guy up, you ought to make it up to him.

He did everything he was told. He was great at his job. And they let him go

it.

The end of my career with the WWE launched me to a few years of my life

had no direction. And I was lost.

And I didn't know what I was going to do. And I knew I would never get back

I had.

And I couldn't rationalize it. And I couldn't find reason for it.

I do feel like...

Wrestling turned its back on me, and I definitely turned my back on wrestling,

and I didn't want to look back at all.

I needed to change, and I didn't really know how.

Fired from WWE and living in Los Angeles, Mark Coppani steps away from

of wrestling.

I was pretty secluded in L .A.

In the moment, it was survival mode. It was living day by day.

It was a level of depression that I didn't recognize at the time. I don't

to say hopelessness, but just being lost, and nothing was really going my

Depressed, upset, frustrated.

You're on top of the world one week. The next week, you're without a job.

Once that tide of momentum turns against you, It's kind of hard to get it to

swing the other way.

The 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.

It's always like that one thing that sticks in people's mind.

You know, oh, that's the terrorist guy.

Sadly, just a waste of a talent, really, because he had so much potential to be

like that big star.

One of the defining moments for me with that is I...

I had come home for the holidays, just a bit of a wreck. I was running low on

money. I remember being exhausted and just saying to myself, you need to get

some sleep.

And then the thought occurred to me, what if you don't wake up? What

would it make?

What difference do you make?

How many days have you wasted?

How many days have you wasted?

Kind of just confronted with the reality of where I was, not where I wanted to

be, and that was the moment that I decided I needed to make a radical

my life. And it was a few months later that I was going to college, working

nights at UPS.

It was very humbling, and I found that fire, that work ethic, that dedication,

that passion, and I focused in on another direction.

I got my teaching certification and I got my master's degree. I got a job

teaching. Then I became a principal.

I didn't stop and I haven't stopped since.

So I don't waste days anymore.

It wasn't until later that I realized I was avoiding the pain and the heartbreak

that I had felt because of what had happened.

With Muhammad Hassan behind him, Marcus had years to reflect on the experience

of being one of wrestling's most controversial villains.

It 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,

of how it had ended. And at that point, it didn't matter how it ended.

It's always easy to say, what if?

I think Muhammad Hassan's outcome was set in stone from his very first promo.

This is no longer the land of the free.

And it has nothing to do with talent, skill, ability, appearance.

It has to do with the culture we lived in.

I feel bad for Mark because the man was talented. The man was good. The man was

gifted. I will fulfill my destiny as the first Arab American to be

champion. I made the decisions to play that character, and I've had to live

it, and so I don't have any ill feelings about it. I don't hold grudges. Just

the fact that I got to experience that and I got to live that, and I had

it for so long, to make that dream a reality, this is something that I am

proud of.

But either way, that character was not long for TV. The world was changing

around us, and eventually the world looked like it does today, where that

of stereotypical, insensitive portrayal of any nationality in this country is

frowned upon now, and it should be.

Sean is an agent in the WWE now. Sean has a great mind for wrestling, and he

just gets the storytelling aspect of wrestling. I talk to Sean all the time,

he's doing very well, and I couldn't be prouder of him.

To be honest, it worked out better for Mark because in the intervening 20

he's had a normal job in a normal place. He's highly thought of in the

community. He's probably been better off in the long run than all the crazy shit

he would have gone through in 20 years in the wrestling business.

So I'm happy for him.

If I could go back and do it all again, I absolutely would do it.

I'm the man I am today because of those experiences.

Muhammad Hassan didn't define who I am.

That character stays in 2004, 2005.

Everything that's happened since is me.

Now I'm the director of human resources in a small city school district, and I

impact over 3 ,000 kids every day. And the only way I had gotten to this point

is because of the epic failure that I had had and that realization that it

doesn't matter what your dreams were. It doesn't matter how it ended. You always

have a second chance.

I don't think my best days are behind me. I think that they're in front of me.

I'm still looking forward to doing some big things.