Muhammad Hassan Says Dark Side of the Ring Changed Focus

Marc Copani says he initially turned down Dark Side of the Ring because he expected its story about Muhammad Hassan to end like the tragedies he associated with the series. The former WWE wrestler says the producers won him over by agreeing to cover his life after the character, then changed the episode’s focus following a lengthy interview.

Copani discussed the documentary with Bryan Asbury on the August 17 edition of Developmentally Speaking. He said Chris Van Vliet had suggested the idea during a previous interview at WrestleCon, and his first response was immediate.

“I did WrestleCon in Philadelphia years ago and I did an interview, my second one with Chris Van Vliet. And he has brought it up, like, ‘I’d love to see a Dark Side of the Ring about your career,’ and I was like, ‘Absolutely not, man. Why would you say that? Everybody dies on that show.’ So I was against it.”

Copani said he watched the series but had never seen an episode with a happy ending. He wanted the documentary to cover more than the same questions he had answered about Hassan’s short WWE run.

“They called me back and they started pitching these ideas and they really kind of sold me on the fact that they wanted to highlight the controversy in the ring, but they also wanted to focus on what happened after. They thought that would be a big part of the story and that I’m on board with. I had a very short career. You could say it was short but impactful, fine. But when I do wrestling interviews, they ask me the same 15 questions and I’ve answered them 100 times. So I didn’t want to make a show about the same 15 questions.”

He said the producers assembled perspectives on the character, the period in which it appeared and Copani’s life beyond WWE. According to Copani, they told him after a seven-hour interview that they were changing the direction of the episode.

“They did such a nice job of taking different people’s perspectives, as well as what was happening in the world at the time and what was happening in the ring, and just kind of brought it all together. I’m incredibly proud of that show. After the interview I did in Buffalo, they kind of told me on the spot they were changing courses and they wanted to focus the show more on me becoming the character and being the character than the controversy. And then they told me that I was going to be the series finale of the season. Like, I don’t know if they planned that, but I swear to God they literally told me that on the spot after it was a seven-hour interview. So I think the content that they got was different than what they expected and I think that’s kind of why they changed course.”

The episode also addressed the career Copani built after wrestling. In the same interview, he described how renewed attention to Muhammad Hassan affected a job opportunity in education, a separate part of his post-WWE story.

Source: Developmentally Speaking with Bryan Asbury. Quotations are drawn from the original video’s available YouTube captions.