Would you consider Muhammad Hassan and Daivari to be a cheap heat by the WWE or a great but...

[Aztecwarrior480]

misunderstood story angle?

I'm just wondering since as great of a heat magnet as Hassan was, I honestly kinda felt that the Muslim Arab-American gimmick was a bit of a cheap heat just to rile up certain American fans who are Islamaphobes and bigots(Then again, I'm not surprised since a lot of the louder fans back in the Attitude-Ruthless Aggression era tend to be dumb, trailer trash hicks).

Other than that, the angle still worked great and generated Hassan more heat than any other Heel wrestler's that I can think of(Triple H included).

 

[The GOAT]

It was cheap heat at it's greatest. Still a shame he couldn't wrestle Batista for the World Heavyweight Championship at Summerslam 2005 in Dave's hometown of Washington D.C. of all places like originally planned. The heat in the building that night would have been incredible. Also would have been a more fitting setting to kill his character off in, but there was so much negative publicity surrounding him (mainly due to the Martyr segment that aired on Smackdown the same day of the London bombings) that WWE were forced to do it a month earlier instead, oh well.

What's funny is that as dickish as Hassan's character was, much of what he had to say in promos was usually pretty valid, but was simply ignored or dismissed because of the knuckle-dragging "America, fuck yeah! Love it or leave it!" mentality.

 

[Mr. Roman Empire]

It's cheap heat, but nothing out of the ordinary for WWE really. They've been doing that shit for years. Look at the way back at when Iron Sheik was around.

 

[Roadster]

Yeah, but in a reverse psychology way.

What he was saying made sense. He didn't do anything out of the ordinary (other than the Undertaker incident) and was just a guy that was pissed off. But the fact that he was wearing arab garb and talked ill of how Americans treated him, he became a heel.

You would think that someone who is speaking out against injustices in their country will be cheered. It just seemed that the crowd reaction solidified everything he was preaching, but in turn the whole idea of a guy trying to claim that all Americans are racist mofos is drawing heat.

In my opinion, it was the best gimmick idea since Mankind or Kane. A guy doing nothing wrong, is getting booed because he's American but with Arab ancestry, and claims that people don't like him because he's an Arab American, when they actually were. It was genius.