Mustafa Ali is ready to show No Surrender.
On Monday, TNA announced that Mustafa Ali would make his in-ring debut at the promotion’s No Surrender event on February 23. Ali will challenge Chris Sabin for the X Division title.
A vignette on the January 25 episode of TNA IMPACT teased that Mustafa Ali would bring his “campaign” to TNA. He later shared his event schedule, which listed appearances at No Surrender, Sacrifice, and the March television tapings in Philadelphia. However, Ali’s first opponent had remained a mystery until Monday.
Getting involved in the creative process
Mansoor told WrestleZone Managing Editor Bill Pritchard that he saw Ali as his work dad. He also highlighted some of his other “dysfunctional work family” members.
“I always call [Ali] my work dad. Mace is my work wife. Ali is my work dad. We have a very dysfunctional family. Dijak is my work uncle because he’s the weird one who’s always shouting and complaining,” Mansoor said. “So when we did that tag team, where it was sort of like an odd pair. We had similar backgrounds, both of the same faith, but I was like a fresh-faced, blue, chipper, doe-eyed babyface. And he was sort of the bitter, resentful. He had just gone through Retribution, so he had quite the axe to grind. That was kind of the dynamic in real life, too.”
“I remember Ali dragging me around all over backstage to writers and production guys and important people in the office, [including] Kevin Dunn, that I had never met before, even though I’d been called up for months because I was too shy to basically introduce myself,” he explained.
“He would drag me to all these places and go, ‘What are we doing this week? What are we going to do tonight? All right, we filmed this vignette. Can we get it on the show? Okay, we’re gonna do our best. All right, all right.’ He was the serious businessman. I was like, ‘Oh my God, I just need to try and be as professional as possible and do whatever he says because he’s so incredibly ambitious.’ That definitely rubbed off on me because after that run, that’s when I started to really get involved, or trying rather, to get involved in the creative process.”
Watch our full interview with Mansoor below:
RELATED: Mansoor Vows To Prove He’s The Most Capable, Captivating, Charismatic Performer In Pro Wrestling
