100 Worst WWE Matches Ever - 52 - Jerry Lawler vs. Muhammad Hassan
New Year's Revolution 2005
If ever a show defined the phrase “One Match Show”, it was New Year’s Revolution 2005. Not only is that one match a classic that I featured highly in my favourite WWE matches of the decade, but the rest of the show is riddled with some truly atrocious wrestling and even worse luck. To put in perspective, the second best match on the card features Eugene blowing out his knee, a Stone Cold Summerslam 1997-esque pinfall, and probably the final dagger in Eugene’s WWE run as a meaningful roster member. That’s followed up by a Trish vs Lita match where Lita - not satisfied with nearly breaking her neck on a suicide dive a few weeks earlier - tears her knee on a dive to the outside after a couple of minutes. The third “match” features Maven stalling for an excruciating amount of time, possibly in response to the abrupt ending to Lita vs. Trish. That’s a match that probably could have made this list. There’s also a Kane vs Snitsky match which is every bit as thrilling as it sounds. It’s a miracle that the show is only represented by one match on this list.
In a cruel irony, this show also features one of the best crowds of this era, and it’s sad that they were subjected to this show because, for the most part, they were enthusiastic for the whole night. At least they got a stellar Backlash earlier this year.
Of all the awful wrestling that the crowd endured for the first two hours, nothing comes close to the match that we are reviewing today.
Perhaps no wrestler in WWE history benefits from more rose-tinted glasses and unwarranted praise than Muhammad Hassan. Unlike Jinder Mahal, who made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move - Hassan is frequented as some magical “what if” in wrestling history. His gimmick has been revised to be some nuanced, genius gimmick that a 2005 audience just wasn’t ready for or smart enough for. People will tell you Hassan was a good talker - or even more unforgivably - that he was a decent wrestler. Don’t believe this nostalgia, these fake memories. The Hassan gimmick was not nearly as nuanced - even in its early days - as you think. He wasn’t anything but an average talker, and his wrestling skills - well we’ll get to that shortly.
Now there is some truth to the “what if” belief, because Hassan did get unlucky with timing and probably lost out on a lot of money personally as a result of things entirely out of his control. On the plus side, we avoided a summer of Batista vs Hassan and a potential Hassan World Heavyweight Champion run, so maybe this was the universe’s way of balancing itself out. At the end of the day, I think the end result for Hassan is the same with or without the circumstances surrounding his departure. His gimmick had a clear shelf life, and at some point you can’t rely on an exploitative cheap gimmick to keep you relevant. At some point you actually have to get in the ring and perform, and this man could not on any meaningful level.
For some ungodly reason, WWE decided to learn no lessons from Unforgiven 2003 as this match is presented with no commentary. Jim Ross accompanies Lawler to ringside, leaving the booth completely empty. Our ear’s are left with the sounds of the four men involved in this match, and a red hot Puerto Rican crowd.
This is the spot that justified JR being removed from commentary for this match.
Never let someone gaslight you into thinking Muhammad Hassan was any good. His job in the 11 minute match is to dominate 10 minutes of it. It is, after all, his main roster debut - and a good debut has one job and that’s to make you look good. It’s simple go out, build some heat, make the crowd sympathise with Lawler, show off your coolest moves. You have a good crowd, an opponent the fans love, a man who knows how to build sympathy better than 99.99% of wrestlers ever, and the fans already hate you. This should be easy. How does Hassan take advantage of this showcase opportunity? With the most excruciating piece of wrestling that we have seen in this series to date. Forget Jinder vs Orton, forget Andre vs Warrior, forget Rude vs Roberts - this is the most boring example of pro wrestling to date.
The man is clueless out there. He wrestles like a guy clearly not ready for this spot - a man that just happened to get his push because someone saw this Italian American and thought “wow, he looks arabic - we can use this”. His offence features five consecutive scoop slams - putting him firmly in the Ezekiel Jackson level of wrestler. He then follows up with three different camel clutches to zero heat. Don’t worry though, because he changes up his resthold to a cobra clutch later on. Wow, what an underrated and underutilised talent. I sure wish we got to see even more of this. This ten minutes of Hassan controlling the match, accompanied by the pure awkward void of a nonexistent commentary team, is the toughest thing I’ve had to watch so far.
Let’s put this in perspective. Maven stalled for time for all but ten seconds of his ten minute segment, and this crowd reacted to him like Abdullah the Butcher. There’s a twelve minute Gene Snitsky match on this card that the crowd stayed invested for. Muhammad Hassan was so bad, that he got this crowd to lose interest. It got this crowd - that would and did accept almost everything they were given - to chant “boring” at a Jerry Lawler match.
Lawler is one of the greatest wrestlers ever, a man who truly exemplifies that it doesn’t matter how many moves you do, as long as you can tell a compelling story. It’s fitting that this match features him, because Hassan is every bit as limited with exactly none of the capability to put together a decent match. Lawler isn’t much interested in making this match anything special - he never teases a comeback until he actually starts it and he looks like a man that would probably rather be doing his day job at this point.
Among everything else that is wrong with this match: even if Hassan was an engaging wrestler; even if Lawler’s heart was in it - the booking of it makes no sense. Lawler was not considered a credible threat in 2005. For Hassan to wrestle him for eleven minutes makes no sense if the goal was to get the man over as a credible heel threat. This match should have been 2 minutes long if the goal was to put Hassan over. Even worse than this, Lawler only loses because he’s distracted by Daivari. Jim Ross does nothing here outside of threatening Daivari once, making the decision to take him off commentary even more baffling.
If you are one of those people that think we were robbed of Muhammad Hassan, main event superstar, please watch this match. Suffer it as I have. And when you’re done, demand an apology from your brain for deceiving you.
Up Next - The Cable Guy of professional wrestling matches.
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