Mustafa Ali reveals what Vince McMahon thought of him. The WWE Superstar admitted that he had to convince the WWE Chairman to turn heel.
Mustafa Ali is without a doubt a talented performer. However, despite all his talent, he struggled for TV time. In a recent interview with Metro, he revealed that Vince McMahon told him he was ‘Too polished, too clean, too nice” and wondered if he had it in him.
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Many others would have been disheartened to have heard that from their Boss. Ali however, chose to work on proving him wrong instead. He eventually earned Vince’s trust and was revealed to be the leader of Retribution, thereby turning heel for the first time in his WWE career.
Mustafa Ali reveals what Vince McMahon thought of him
“Even pre-pandemic, I was struggling to maintain television presence – and I know it was all character based,” Ali said. “When you pitch a million and one ideas as far as stories, characters, promos, this and that – and you always get told that you’re good, but then nothing happens – you start pointing the finger at everybody except for you.
“After sitting at home for seven months and then finally coming back to Monday Night Raw, only to pick up a few victories and then to go back to not being on Monday Night Raw and now being stuck on Main Event, you’re kinda scratching your head.
“Like, what have I gotta do? And then you realize, you’ve gotta go ask the hard questions. I went up to Vince McMahon himself and said, ‘What am I missing?’ [He said], ‘Too polished, too clean, too nice, I don’t now if you have it in you!’”
“I’ll still be presented as a babyface, I’ll still come out with the same look, I’ll still shake the guy’s hand at the end of the matches,” Ali said in his pitch to McMahon. “But there’s a moment in the match where I’ve just had enough. And I did it! If you go back and watch these Main Event matches before I was revealed as the leader of RETRIBUTION, those were actually me auditioning to turn heel.”
“Once he was satisfied with those [matches], I stared cutting promos for him,” Ali recalled. “I would go into his office, I would cut a promo on him, this and that. I didn’t know, because I’d never asked – I didn’t say, ‘Hey I wanna be with RETRIBUTION.’ I was just auditioning for my own thing. The day of the reveal is when I found out.
“I was thinking about going this way, but they went this way. At the end of the day, it was an opportunity to be on TV on Monday Night Raw weekly for multiple segments. That’s leaps and bounds from what I was doing the year prior.”
Ali faced Mansoor at Crown Jewel. The hometown boy came out victorious in their match. Both Mansoor and Ali will move to SmackDown once the WWE Draft takes effect starting this Friday.
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