Mustafa Ali opens up about a confusing moment that happened between him and Brock Lesnar on WWE Raw.
Ahead of his Intercontinental Championship match against Gunther at WWE Night of Champions 2023, Mustafa Ali appeared in a backstage interview on “WWE Raw.” Amidst Ali’s heart-pouring speech, Brock Lesnar then interrupted, telling Ali to “Get a life, kid.” While speaking on Insight With Chris Van Vliet, Ali revealed that the line wasn’t a personal dig from Lesnar, but rather one aimed by a WWE executive.
According to Ali, he initially went over to Saudi Arabia to promote Night of Champions despite not being scheduled to compete on the card. After an unexpected interaction with the President of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority, though, Ali found himself slotted into the premium live event.
“I’m not on the show, I’m going there. I’m making everyone happy. Just because you’re always going to relate to someone that looks like you. I do these little events. Obviously, very appreciative of the turnout here. But the turnout there was insane. They’re expecting 500 people. There was like 3,000 people. So the guy’s like oh, ‘This Mustafa, maybe he does the show.’ I was like, ‘It’s the Night of Champions. You have to be a champion to be on the show. I’m not a champion.’ I didn’t realize I was talking to like the president of the GEA, which is a general entertainment authority that basically runs the shows in Saudi Arabia. He goes, ‘You leave it to me, I talk to Vince [McMahon].’ I go ‘No, no.’ He goes ‘I’m going to request that you’re on the show.’
“I think what happened was someone told Vince what to do, and he’s like, ‘Oh, okay,’” Ali continued. “So the whole day, I kind of could sense the nervous tension about something was going to happen [during the Raw promo].”
Lesnar’s Insult Surprised Ali
Per Ali, his promo segment on Raw was initially set for a deeper backstage area. Last-minute, WWE officials moved it to Gorilla instead, with Ali aware that Lesnar would walk by in the middle of it. What Ali didn’t know was that Lesnar would verbally insult him.
“I didn’t know he was gonna say that,” Ali said. “So when he said that and he walked off, there was this dead silence, because everyone that worked there, they knew what happened. They’re like, Oh, they’re trying to send a message, but it’s like, why does it have to be in my expense? It’s just one of those things, I think, because of the frustration and because of what had happened, I think that’s why Shawn [Michaels] had reached out to Hunter about NXT, because right after that is when I made my NXT appearance. But again, not to cry over it like that. It is what it is, the way the cookie crumbles.”
At WWE Night of Champions, Gunther defeated Ali to retain the WWE Intercontinental Championship, while Lesnar bested Cody Rhodes via technical submission. Four months later, WWE released Ali just days before he was scheduled to challenge Dominik Mysterio for the NXT North American Championship.
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