Mansoor also detailed his first conversation with John Laurinaitis.
Taking to Twitch following their releases from WWE were Mansoor and Mace, also known as ‘mån.sôör’ and ‘ma.çé’ from their time as a part of Maximum Male Models.
There was a portion of the stream when Mansoor took a look back at the early stages of his run in WWE that led to his main roster call-up. He shared that he would beg the NXT creative team to put him on television, but stated that he could not lose on NXT or 205 Live because Vince McMahon did not want him to.
Mansoor added that it was to the point where he could not be on the losing end of a tag team or Triple Threat match, even if he was not pinned. He closed by saying when he got to the main roster and had his first match, he lost.
And by the way, just as an aside, I haven’t been on TV, on NXT TV for like two years… because I wasn’t allowed to lose… I only worked NXT house shows and I was begging NXT creative, ‘Please. What can I do? What can I do? I just wanna be on the show. I love NXT. I really wanna be a part of the show,’ and eventually I found out that I wasn’t allowed to lose because Vince (McMahon) decreed that I wasn’t allowed to lose.
So I’m on 205 Live for a while where I can’t even be in a tag match where I don’t get pinned. I can’t even be in a Triple Threat where I lose by someone else getting pinned. I’m not allowed. So finally, I get called up and what’s the first thing that happens to me? I lose.
After Mansoor’s main roster debut against Sheamus, he learned that Vince McMahon wanted him to gain 20 pounds. McMahon then connected his personal trainer and Mansoor.
Johnny Ace says, ‘We gotta get you to gain some size. Vince wants you to put on 20 pounds.’ He says, ‘We want you to put on 20 pounds’ and so what happened was Vince (McMahon) gave me his personal trainer. I got Vince’s personal trainer that works out with him and he wrote me up a diet and workout plan that I still use to this day, that got me to 210. So I went from 180 to 210 in the two years I was on the main roster.
The discussion about Mansoor’s size derives from a conversation he had with John Laurinaitis before getting called up. Laurinaitis shared with him that he told McMahon that Mansoor could make a lot of money for the company and McMahon agreed. But McMahon added that the last time he had saw Mansoor, he looked ‘soft’ (fat).
When I got called up (to WWE’s main roster), it was ThunderDome era and I get a text on Friday from someone in NXT saying, ‘Can you beat the ThunderDome today?’ Because it was SmackDown and I was like, ‘Yeah! For sure!’ So I drive down and it’s just to talk to Johnny Ace because he was like, ‘Hey kid, you know, I was on the plane with Vince and I said, that kid can make a lot of money for us and he agreed so we’re gonna call you up.’ I was like, ‘Awesome!’ And he said, ‘One problem though, Vince said that the last time he saw you, you looked a little soft…’ He said I looked fat.
The 27-year-old Mansoor is a free agent for the first time since 2018. He’s in the midst of his eighth year in the business and come December 2023, his 90-day no-compete will be up.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit the original source with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
