Ali wanted to shatter any preconceived notions about anyone that looks like him.
The reigning TNA X Division Champion is Mustafa Ali and coming up on April 20th, he’ll be putting his title on the line at the Rebellion pay-per-view against Jake Something.
Going into the match, Ali guest appeared on the Paltrocast With Darren Paltrowitz. As their conversation rolled on, Ali opened up about insecurities he had early on in his WWE run. Here’s what he had to say:
I feel like a lot of things that happen is people will leave a place of work and the automatic assumption is to blame everyone else but yourself. If you look back at anything I did in 2016, 2017, it was the first time I was on TV. So there’s a huge learning curve, right? It wasn’t like we went to NXT and learned how to work TV. We were just thrown on a show. 205 Live was a bunch of indie guys that got thrown on TV. So, you deal with your own insecurities and I had a huge insecurity about being Muslim, about being brown and my name being Mustafa Ali because I grew up in an era where I was the bad guy, I was the terrorist, I was the taxi cab driver, I was the guy that worked at the convenient store. So for me to come onto your TV and want you to love me, I have to go out of my way to make sure I didn’t seem threatening or anything like that, hence comes the smiles and it was, ‘Smile this, smile this.’ Always super positive, thumbs up, you know? And I would be careful about raising my voice in promos and whatnot and it was a real insecurity that I had right now — at that time. So, to answer your question, the idea behind it, I was so focused on shattering that stereotype, breaking down that barrier, you know? Eliminating these preconceived ideas about someone that looks like me, that I wanted to make sure I didn’t screw it up by giving them the idea or the audience the idea that, oh, he sounds mean… or whatever like that. So just really going out of my way to be accepted, to be approachable, to be someone that you could identify and root with. So that was the idea behind the full-face smile that you alluded to.
Circling back to TNA, negotiations between him and the company began immediately after he became a free agent. He had a clear vision of what he wanted to do and how he wanted it done and expressed that to TNA.
There were ongoing negotiations (between IMPACT/TNA & myself) as soon as I became a free agent and I’m just such a strategist. I’m all about marketing and making, no pun intended, but making an impact. I wanted to make sure it was something special and something unique. So when TNA and I decided to kind of meet and have a discussion, I had a very clear vision of what I wanted to do and I was very adamant about how it should be done and what the overall presentation should be and TNA’s been great, you know? They’ve seen the vision to life and it’s paid dividends already as you can see… I’m already making strides to make the X Division great again. My debut match was the main event. Hasn’t been done since 2005, 2006, so already making history. So yeah, to answer your question, it was something that was very well-calculated and discussed and executed to perfection.
Over the weekend, Ali put his X Division Championship on the line against Amazing Red at The Wrestling REVOLVER x House of Glory’s pay-per-view. To hear a recap of that match and the event, click here.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit the Paltrocast With Darren Paltrowitz with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
