By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Insight With Chris Van Vliet with guest Mustafa Ali
Host: Chris Van Vliet
Podcast available via Podcasts.Apple.com
On the scariest moment he’s ever had in a match: “For some reason, it’s always tied to Elijah. Technically, it was part of a match. So back in December, we were in El Paso, an incident that is now named the Lasso in El Paso. It was The Rascalz, shout out to The Rascalz. Hope they’re doing well. We’re doing this thing where I’ve had enough with the match, I’m out of here, I’m taking the high road. The lights go off and on, and then Elijah appears behind on a horse, and the idea is that he attacks me, ties me up, he lassos me and he pulls me out of the arena on a horse. That’s not the scary part, right?
“Little context, so I’ll give you twofold. There’s a story behind the story. Earlier in the day, we’re rehearsing this stunt, and this is just when TNA announced its partnership with AMC, there’s AMC execs there and all this stuff like that. There’s a director named George who’s been with TNA for a long time, and we’re kind of walking through this rehearsal, and it is not happening. So the horse is getting scared, the lasso is becoming undone. Elijah’s not tying it right. The cameraman’s out of position. Everyone’s messing up, except for me. The director, George, says ‘Hey, I’m gonna pull the plug on this. We’re not doing the stunt. We got to come up with something.’ I’m like, ‘George, I’m telling you, we can pull this off.’ He goes, ‘You don’t understand. AMC is here, this is a bad impression. We’re not doing it.’ I don’t know what overcame me. I said, ‘George, let me do this stunt. I put my job on it. If it goes wrong, you can fire me on the spot.’
“Without any hesitation, he goes, ‘Remember what you said.’ Shit, what did I get myself into? I went up to him [Elijah] and go, ‘Dude, we have to do it this way. There’s a guy that handles horses. Let him tie the damn lasso. No one’s looking at him. They’re looking at you.’ He’s 300 pounds of muscle. They’re looking at you dude, relax. So we had the handler do the lasso off-screen. You just don’t see it, and then it looks like Elijah did it. So the stunt goes according to plan. I don’t get fired, but I almost die. This is why. What you guys don’t see is when the horse pulls me away, you see me screaming and all that stuff when we go down this hallway, the thing about this hallway is there’s another horse. No one told me there were two horses. The handler, because of me, was on stage doing the tying. No one is manning the horse.
“You guys ever see when one horse runs what another horse does? First, it gets scared and starts kicking. So the hallway, it’s slim, and there’s a horse right there. So as I’m kind of going yay, I’ve done it, I turn around, there’s a horse, and the horse is kicking and screaming and jumping. I was like, All right, this is it. This is how stupid wrestlers are. My first thought is, and there’s not a cameraman to get it. So I just cover up. I say, thank you God for the good life. I just crawled up and the horse just missed me like, right here, I felt its tail almost, and I’m yelling, stop! So luckily, security came and stopped the horse. I’m a very pleasant person, despite what people hear. I got some students in the Chicago wrestling center over there. I’m very pleasant, I don’t get mad. I was on one that day, ‘Who put this horse over here?!’ There’s a whole other horse. So yeah, I’ve never had a scary experience as bad as that in the ring. It was definitely the horse. But I’m alive.”
An Undertaker story: “It was the 25th anniversary [of Raw]. It was when Raw was doing the Barclays Center and the Manhattan Center at the same time. The Manhattan Center, there’s a bunch of people that have paid a lot of money to attend this event. But here’s the problem that they didn’t plan, there was no actual matches there. It was just legends coming out and cutting a promo. So about almost an hour into it, the fans start realizing, hey, we got jibbed. There’s no matches, and they start booing recklessly. So Triple H is at the Manhattan Center. He gets on the phone, and he calls over Barclays, and he goes, ‘I need matches, and I need them now.’ So Mark Carrano goes, ‘I know, the cruiserweights!’ So he stuffs a bunch of cruiserweights into a van, and just sends us blindly to Manhattan Center. Hideo Itami is driving, I don’t know.
“So we’re running upstairs and everyone’s panicking, go, go, go, upstairs. Go upstairs. We’re running with our gear, because we’re all coming from Barclays. Triple H goes, ‘Situation, there’s no matches during the commercial break. I just need you guys to go out there and do the craziest shit for two or three minutes.’ All right, cool. So I was wrestling Lince Dorado, and we run upstairs, we have our bags, so we just open this door and we throw our bags down, we close the door, we start talking. The referee comes up and goes, ‘Hey guys, where are you changing?’ Right here.
“And then we look up, private locker room for The Undertaker. Open the door sheepishly, me and Lince, ‘Hello, sir. I’m Ali. This is Lince. Huge mistake. We’re just gonna grab our bags and leave.’ We go to reach for our bags, and he goes, ‘Hey, you guys don’t want to hang out with the motherf—ing Undertaker?’ Before I could say anything, Lince goes ‘Hell yeah!’ We’re changing. He’s asking us about, you know, I told him I was a former police officer. He was like, oh shit, we’re talking about this and that. Lince was a former teacher. So he’s like, Isn’t that crazy? We’re talking to The Undertaker about life, and then we kind of forgot that we had to go. We just ran out and did our match up. And then, yeah, it was just one of those wild experiences with the Undertaker.”
On Brock Lesnar telling him, “Get a life, kid”: “So it’s a little twofold, right? So I get that it was really funny, but if I tell you guys a real story and feel really, really sad, so I’ll share what I can. I would tell you guys, but I don’t want people to get in trouble. That was a shot at me from someone very high up, and not directly. The back story of this, and I’ll keep it to this. So I hope you guys can understand. I was sent to go do media, public relations for an upcoming event in Saudi Arabia called Night of Champions. So I go there. I’m not on the show. I’m going there. I’m making everyone happy. Just because it’s, you know, 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.’ So the whole day, I kind of could sense the nervous tension about something was going to happen. I had this promo, but I’m reading it, and it was like, and then what happens? They go, ‘Well, Brock’s just gonna walk by.’ And I go, yeah? And last second, you know, let me ask you guys this question. When someone’s doing a backstage interview, where does it happen? Backstage. Not by Gorilla. So they go at the last second, I’m getting ready, ‘Oh, we’re moving the shot to gorilla now.’ And I go, right, okay, here it comes. So I didn’t know he was gonna say that. 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 at my expense? So 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. I know when I look at WWE, I know that I knocked on every door, I presented every idea, I never said no for the most part, and I did good work, man. I’m never gonna look in the mirror and be like, ‘Oh man, I failed.’ I talked to a lot of my peers that have unfortunately got let go. I go, are you doing okay? And they all said the same thing. They go, ‘Man, I just wish I tried a little harder. I wish I wasn’t mad.’ I go, when I got let go, I just go, well, there’s nothing else I could have done. I tried everything. Comedy, serious, being the little guy, this guy, whatever the hell. So I walked away with that. And then, you know, when Brock said, ‘Go get a life kid’, I quite literally did that. I’m the f—ing man now!”
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