Mustafa Ali (@MustafaAli_X) is a professional wrestler signed to TNA Wrestling. He sits 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!

I thought you weren’t gonna be able to walk after that guitar casket match. 

“I would say single-handedly, one of the roughest nights I had. That thing that was constructed, I think it was 500 pounds. So when we think about casket matches, my hope is to use the damn thing at some point. But it was very weirdly shaped. Obviously, it’s shaped like a guitar. So I’m looking at it and I’m like there’s no safe way for me to actually get tossed into this, so there goes half of my ideas. When we got there, I was like we’re just gonna have to kill each other. So, yeah, I appreciate it. If you haven’t had a chance to watch it, it’s on YouTube. Watch it, please. I have scars all over my body.”

I feel like you don’t do a lot of 450s anymore. You save them for special occasions, and in that match, you did one off the top rope to the outside, through a table.

“Yeah. So the problem with that one too, this damn casket is so big. It’s no one’s fault, but when he [Elijah] had positioned the table, it was kind of off. So we move on to the spot, I looked, I go, oh sh*t. The way he’s laying on it, and the way I have to come off the ropes, because the casket is right there, his knees are where I need to land. I’m supposed to land on this torso. I go either I’m about to break my ribs or he’s about to break his knees. Good luck to you, Elijah. Little did I know at the last second he decided to put his knees up. So it’s my ribs. Everyone’s fine. I’m indestructible. But it all hurt.”

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, and 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. So 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.”

You had this moment in a match with Cedric Alexander where you did the suicide dive to the outside, you don’t get caught and you face plant to the ground. 

“Once again, not my fault. I kind of felt bad about what happened. I’m at the stage in my career now, man, where I tried protecting and really going out of my way to make sure no negativity comes towards people. But now I’m at that stage in my life where, like, if something happened and you messed up or you f*cked up, it’s on you. What originally happened was I gave very clear instructions to the people that were accompanying me to the ring that night. TNA have, like, this big secret service entrance, and I have this political character. I gave them instructions I go, ‘When you guys advance on Cedric, stay here.’ I don’t want Cedric close to the ring because this dive, I’m sensing it’s this big show we’re at UBS Arena. We’re trying to sell this thing out. And I just had that vibe, and like no one had talked about AMC or the network. I had this intuition, I go, I think something big is going to happen for TNA, and I want to be one of the reasons why it happens. So I just had this mindset, they’re not giving me the ball, but I’m going to take it, type of thing. So very clear instructions, see where that tripod is. I go stand there. Well, I start running, and all of a sudden the guys that were supposed to stand by the tripod have advanced way closer. At the end of the day, could I have put on the brakes? Sure. So I go all the way I clip Cedric barely and, yeah, I just, I remember the ramp was like grated. So I just remember the, like, the greats just peeling like the skin, and I roll up, and you would think I’d stay down, but I had to get up and like, I’m indestructible. Everyone thought that was the death of me. But no, here I am standing once again. Chicago motherf*ckers are tough.”

You recently returned to NXT:

“So he [Shawn Michaels] had called me when I got released, and he was, it’s one of those things where you can kind of tell when someone’s being fake. With mine, it was not. He was like, ‘What? What do you mean? What happened?’ He literally found out as I found out, because that weekend, yeah, I got let go on a Tuesday, and I was supposed to wrestle Dominik Mysterio for the North American Championship on a Saturday. So we had talked then, and then we stayed in touch. He was very proud of the PWI cover, he just sent me that. He goes, ‘I just want to let you know I’m always watching.’ That was Shawn Michaels. It’s one of those things, like when Matt, Jeff, Shawn, these guys that you grew up watching, emulating to some degree when they compliment you, there’s a lot of weight to it. So, yeah, that was the first time I saw Shawn. It was the week prior. It was for the promo to challenge. So I get there and this writer gives me this promo. I’m reading it, I go ‘I get it, but I kind of disagree. Let me go talk to Shawn.’ That’s how I’ve been my whole career. Like, no, no, no, pardon you, but like, you’re not going to change it. So I go and plead my case to Shawn. I go, ‘Hey, listen, I understand that you want me to talk about what’s happened. I was promised this championship. I don’t want to come off whiny. In TNA I’m this really presidential political weasel, politics is way and stuff.’ I think it’d be more fun, we want to have fun. We watch wrestling, everything doesn’t need to be dramatic sometimes. I go, ‘So what if I just like politic my way into this match?’ He goes, okay, yeah, I kind of see and I kind of told him what I want to say. He’s like, alright, yeah, we can do it that way. That’s fine. All right, cool, awesome. Oh my god, I don’t work here and I’m causing drama. I sh*t you not, five minutes before we go out. So Ethan’s been updated. Ali’s gonna change his variable. Dive minutes before we go out. Shawn’s like, ‘No, I think you’re wrong. I want you to do the promo the way I wrote. I’m telling you. Ali, people resonate with you, because when you put up this facade sometimes. But when you’re real, you’re real. You just got to tell people what happened.’ I was like, I can’t believe I said that. I go, ‘Shawn, I gotta tell you, I think you’re wrong, but you asked me to do something. I’ll do it.'”

You told Shawn Michaels you think he’s wrong?

“Shawn Michaels was not wrong. I go out and yeah, as I’m saying the words, it’s just like, man, you could tell this isn’t a problem. I’m telling you I busted my ass, and right when I was gonna get a reward, you pulled the you know. I thought about this, this, this, and I come back and just the reception, especially online, I don’t try to pay too much attention, but it’s feedback, it’s an opinion. I will digest it. And sometimes some people have some sh*tty takes. But for the most part, it was like, Yo, no, that was real. There is a real, ‘Is this dude cursed?’ Elimination Chambers, KofiMania, this stuff, this all comes at the expense of me. So hopefully this is a nice little redemption starting part of Oh man, is WWE going to do something they haven’t done before and put a championship on someone that doesn’t work here. Who knows, right? So Shawn was totally right with that.”

I hear you have a great Undertaker story:

“It was the 25th anniversary [of Raw]. It was when Raw was doing the Barclay Center and the Manhattan Center at the same time. 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 [what’s going on]. 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. And 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 in 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!”

What was the idea of coming up with the light-up mask?

“So it’s long gone now, but everyone thought it was Sub Zero. I think some people thought it was Iron Man. The idea that I sat down and kind of presented to Vince at the time was that I want to be the light. And what I mean by that is everyone was just such a badass. No one was like genuine babyface. The idea behind it was I wanted to be the light. He said, Well, how do we convey that you’re the light? Why are you just walking around saying that you’re the light? So the idea about the light was Oh, I’ll be the physical embodiment of the light. So it’s like, you know, when you’re going through dark times, my hope was to motivate you through a promo. That’s why all the 205 Live matches, I got my ass kicked on design so that you can see that this guy will not stay down. He has something that he’s fighting for. So just that idea of, like, light being a symbol, you know, the whole idea, there’s light at the end of tunnel, there is hope. That was the idea behind it. The quick little Daniel Bryan story, I was never supposed to be on SmackDown. I was on 205 Live, doing my thing, and one day I’d like to reenact this, but there’s not enough room. A writer told me this story. They’re all sitting in the writers room, and Daniel Bryan comes in. He kicks the door and he goes, ‘Hey, we don’t have any hot young babyfaces for me to work. I want a hot young babyface! Give me a good-looking baby face for me to beat the sh*t out of.’ The next week, they’re like, ‘Hey, you’re wrestling Daniel Bryan.'”

What are 3 things you are grateful for?

“My wife, time, and the chance to dream.”

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