Two WWE-Saudi Arabia-related stories from Mansoor.
At WWE’s Greatest Royal Rumble event in 2018 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Mansoor was part of a segment on the show with Shawn Daivari and Ari Daivari. He was one of eight participants scouted during a tryout in Jeddah.
Mansoor would go on to sign with WWE and the following year at Super ShowDown in Jeddah, Mansoor won a 51-man Battle Royal. He dove into that experience and the lead-up to it while streaming on Twitch. He shared that all 51 talents were in the same room together and when it was stated out loud that Mansoor was winning, all the talents turned and looked at him.
He did not introduce himself to any of the talent and it was Mustafa Ali who informed him that he had heat for it. Mansoor learned that Claudio Castagnoli was not happy and he thought Kofi Kingston had an issue with him as well. After the match, he shook everyone’s hand. Mansoor then retold the story of when he used the bathroom in Shane McMahon’s private locker room at the event.
All 51 people in the Battle Royal (at WWE Super ShowDown 2019) are in a big room… And Jamie Noble is going over the match and Heath Slater keeps shouting, ‘Okay, but who’s winning?’ And Jamie’s like, ‘Hold on’ and then finally, Heath’s like, ‘Who’s winning the damn thing?’ And Jamie’s like, ‘The NXT kid’s winning, okay!?’ And everybody turns to me and looks at me. I’m like, ‘Uh,’ so I go hide in a separate locker (room) because when I did my tryout, we went to that same venue and they had us go to a storage closet. So I went to the same storage closet and I remember (Mustafa) Ali pulled me aside and said, ‘Hey dude, you got heat man.’ I was like, ‘What? What happened?’ He goes, ‘You didn’t say hi to anybody, you didn’t introduce yourself, you didn’t shake anybody’s hand…’ Yeah, I did (think I had heat with Kofi Kingston). I was really, really sad about that. I was like, ‘Oh my God. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that at all. I just thought that that’s not what you do here.’ He’s like, ‘Of course it is. Were you not told that?…’ And this is before our run by the way so this was my first time ever talking to Ali and funnily enough, he was like, ‘Yeah, Claudio said that he was pissed.’ I was like, ‘F*ck! No!’ Because I’m a huge Cesaro fan and I would end up working him, obviously, later. So, I made sure, in the Battle Royal — well funny, in the Battle Royal, I was standing around and I was next to Luke Gallows and I said, ‘Hey, I know this is probably a weird time to say this but I’m a huge Talk’n Shop fan’ and he was like, ‘Pretty cool.’ Anyway, afterwards, I shake everyone’s hand, I say, ‘Thank you, thank you very much,’ introduce myself to everybody. Finally, I had to take a huge sh*t, and so I go to the bathroom that I went to when I went there for my tryout. When I was there for my tryout, right across from the storage closet was a separate locker room with three stalls. So I go in that room and I go into the stalls, take a nasty sh*t, just nasty. So I flush it, come on out, start washing my hands. All of a sudden I hear, ‘Hey man’ and I turn to my right and it’s Shane McMahon and I say, ‘Oh hi,’ and I wanna shake his hand but my hands are wet. I pull out the paper and I dry off and throw it away and as I’m walking out, he goes, ‘I’m Shane’ and I go, ‘Oh! I’m Mansoor, sorry.’ I elbow bump him and he just nods his head and I leave… That was before the match, the match happens and then Shane’s in Gorilla about to (win) his ‘Best in the World’ trophy and he looks at me and he says, ‘Hey man, that was a really good promo.’ I was like, ‘Thanks Shane’ and I have to take a piss so I go back to that bathroom and now there’s a paper next to that door that says, ‘Shane McMahon, private locker room.’ So, I took a sh*t in Shane’s bathroom… I honestly think he thought I was like a janitor or something (he laughed).
Fast forwarding to Crown Jewel 2021, Mansoor had a singles match against Mustafa Ali. He thought the crowd would not care because they were following Edge and Seth Rollins’ Hell in a Cell match, but the crowd was alive for them.
The post-match saw Ali get dropped to the mat by karate Olympian, Tareg Hamed. When Mansoor got to the backstage area, John Laurinaitis was clapping and he thought it was for him. Mansoor quickly found out that Laurinatis was clapping for Hamed.
The match with (Mustafa) Ali (at WWE Crown Jewel 2021), I was very happy with. I saw the run sheet and I was like, ‘Holy sh*t. We are after Seth and Edge in the cell. We are f*cked. There is no way that anybody gives a f*ck about anything we do in that match’ and shockingly, they came for us (he smirked). That’s a poor expression. They actually came up for us. We told a good, little story with the time we had and we worked hard. I thought it was really good, really proud of that match and then the whole aftermath was very funny with the Olympic karate player (Tareg Hamed), kicking Mustafa in the head and I thought he was gonna take my job for sure… I swear to God, we get to the back and I see Johnny Ace and he’s clapping and I’m like, ‘Thank you Johnny’ and he’s like, ‘No, not you,’ and the karate guy comes out. Starts shaking his hand… He was a very cool dude… I definitely could not beat his ass, I could not.
POST Wrestling corroborated a Wrestlenomics report which noted that WWE is scheduled to return to Saudi Arabia for an event on November 4th. Several weeks later is the company’s Survivor Series Premium Live Event in Rosemont, Illinois.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit the original source with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
