Posted on 3/05/126 by Colin Vassallo
Mustafa Ali sat down with Chris Van Vliet at INSIGHT Live in
Chicago to discuss his guitar coffin match with Elijah on
TNA Impact, a terrifying moment that took place when he was
dragged to the back by a horse, Brock Lesnar telling him to
“Get a life, kid”, a hilarious Undertaker story, returning
to WWE NXT to challenge for the North American Championship,
getting advice from AJ Styles at TNA’s AMC premiere, and
more!
What’s been the scariest moment you’ve 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.’ Sh*t, 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.”
I hear you have a great 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 sh*t 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*cking 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 sh*t, 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.”
“Get a life, kid.” Brock Lesnar said this to you. What’s the
story behind it?
“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.’ 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 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*cking man
now!”