Former WWE star Mustafa Ali appeared on Insight With Chris Van Vliet, where he talked about a number of topics including if he was surprised by his WWE release.
Ali said, “Not surprised that it happened. Surprised when it did happen? Yeah. I was in NXT at the time, and I actually had a pay-per-view match scheduled that weekend with Dominik Mysterio for the North American Championship.”
On if he was going to win the North American Championship if the match happened:
“I don’t believe anything until it happens. But yeah, I don’t mind sharing. I think that was the plan. But mind you, the plan was actually to put the North American Championship on me months prior. But WWE is so smart with advertising and contract negotiations. So NXT, the network deal was coming up. Shawn Michaels in NXT is awesome. He explains to me, ‘Hey, we’re gonna put the North American Championship on you.’ What happens is the network deal is coming up and this is when Judgment Day, specifically Dom, is just white hot. I mean, they’re still white hot right now, but Dom was next level right there. So they were like, ‘Hey, everyone in Judgment Day has a championship. We want to put a championship on Dom, and we want to spike the ratings for NXT.’ Because the idea is if you spike the ratings with the contract negotiations this helps you. So this is when Seth was coming and Becky was coming. So I get a call from Shawn, ‘Hey, we’re actually putting the championship on Dom, and here’s a reason…’ I go yeah, that makes total sense, awesome, do it. I didn’t expect it coming. Dom’s gonna come and challenge Wes Lee and beat him, great. So we do that. Then we do a three-way match, which was super fun with Dom, me and Wes Lee. And then [Shawn] is like Hey, Dom is needed back on the main roster. Poor guy was working six days a week. So I think that was a plan. Was it a surprise? No, because I saw WWE stock and WWE in general going this way [up], and my stock just going this way [down].”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
