Muhammad Hassan on the genuine fear his WWE character caused

Muhammad Hassan may be remembered for all the wrong reasons for his time in WWE, but at the end of the day, he was only playing a character. While the character might have been in poor taste, and the unfortunate coincidence of the London bombings with his angle against The Undertaker back in 2005 had extremely bad timing, his WWE character also genuinely provoked actual fear in people.

During a recent interview with Chris Van Vliet on his podcast, The Chris Van Vliet Show, Muhammad Hassan shared stories about the genuine fear that his character caused people and how they acted when they saw him outside WWE.

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Muhammad Hassan on how scared people were of his WWE character

Talking about the sort of reaction that people had to his character outside WWE, Muhammad Hassan talked about how a mother pulled her daughter off the path so that they could pass by. He also shared a story of how, when he was traveling with WWE on a plane with Shelton Benjamin, people at the back of the plane were reacting with genuine fear.

"What was this, 2004? We were just a few years removed from 9/11 and I remember a few instanced. One I remember was San Fransisco. I can't remember the name of the hotel, Shawn (Daivari) and I were on the path walking from the parking lot to the hotel entrance and a lady was walking towards us and we had the full gimmick on and the glasses and my suit and 230 pounds at the time, so we looked intimidating. She took her daughter off the path and walked like five feet away. I mean there was plenty of room for us on that path but she was scared. And one time we were on a plane, Shawn and I, and we were sitting towards the front and I think it might have been Shelton. Somebody came up and told us that towards the back of the plane people were calling their families to tell them that they loved them. So there were times when there were people who were really frightened and honestly it made playing the character pretty easy." - h/t Chris Van Vliet

ICYMI: This interview drops tomorrow morning! 👍🎧 https://t.co/EgAwvytwcF

— Chris Van Vliet (@ChrisVanVliet) July 23, 2020

Muhammad Hassan also worked with former WWE Superstar Shad Gaspard and wrote a graphic novel which has now been released. The graphic novel "Assassin and Son" is available now through scoutcomics.com with all of the proceeds going to Shad Gaspard's family.

Years ago @Shadbeast and I wrote a graphic novel which will now be officially released in November. We lost Shad in May and to honor him, Scout is releasing the first book with 2 special edition covers on Wednesday. All proceeds go to Shad’s family #legacy https://t.co/YWNXMku07i

— Marc Copani (@mcopani1) July 3, 2020

Also, check out Sportskeeda's own Chris Featherstone's UnSKripted interview with Muhammad Hassan.