Eventually, Hassan reached the point of no return in July 2005 with an angle that saw Hassan summon five masked men to attack Undertaker with piano wire. The angle would air unedited and after the London bombings. It would subsequently lead to Hassan being removed from TV and released from WWE just a few months later. Hassan was not in favor of the idea then or now, although it wasn’t until a later conversation with someone high up in WWE that he realized his career was in trouble.

“I didn’t agree with it, I didn’t like it,” Hassan said. “When it all happened that morning, I really didn’t understand what was going on. I guess I really didn’t realize it was still going to be aired … I don’t recall having any feelings about it one way or the other. I remember finding out after the fact that it was aired with a crawler, that kind of disclaimer that kind of went out at the bottom of the screen.”

“When it happened, I remember knowing this was a big deal … And I kind of had a feeling that I … I remember I asked Johnny Ace, who was head of talent relations at the time — I was looking at homes in Syracuse,” he added. “And I remember telling him ‘I’m about to buy a house.’ And he said ‘Don’t buy the house.’ ‘Sh*t. That’s kind of when I knew this probably wasn’t going to end well for me.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit “The False Finish” and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription