Mustafa Ali made his surprise return to WWE programming this week by popping up on Monday Night Raw as a babyface, interrupting Miz TV and beating The Miz via roll-up before getting attacked behind by Ciampa. Prior to that episode, Ali hadn’t wrestled since October and was months removed from publicly announcing that he had requested his release from the company only to be turned down. Fightful Select‘s Sean Ross Sapp gave a few details about Ali’s route back to television on Tuesday.
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WWE reportedly came up with plans for his comeback last week and initially called for him to lose his return match, but the decision was later made to reverse. Sapp then noted, “Ali was scheduled to be at Raw Monday, and meet with Johnny Ace according to people within the company, and had yet to be informed of the creative plans at that point. Those that we’ve spoken to said that he was more than comfortable referencing his absence and why it happened. Several people on the roster and the staff were excited to see Mustafa Ali back at work.”
Ali updated his Twitter profile following his return but has yet to directly comment on why he chose to come back to WWE. His contract reportedly isn’t up until midway through 2024. There were previously reports regarding him have an argument with Vince McMahon over what kind of character he should portray.
The former cruiserweight explained in an interview with ComicBook last year that he had to essentially audition just for WWE’s creative team to consider using him as a heel. That led to him becoming the leader of the infamous Retribution group.
“I kind of looked at my career at a snapshot. I made my return. Nothing really happened. I was off for seven months, for no apparent reason to me other than just creative had nothing for me,” Ali said. “When I was initially looking at the mirror, I go, ‘What is wrong with me? Nothing’s wrong with me. Look at me.’ Again, after seven months, you have to eventually have that look in the mirror and go, ‘What am I missing?’ I think the thing I was missing was a little bit of edge. I knew I could cut a great promo. But again, within the confines of being a good guy, you’re very limited as to what you can say.
“So I presented the idea of doing something. It wasn’t being the leader of Retribution, it was, I met with Vince McMahon and the creative writing team and said, ‘I think I’m capable of doing more and this is the route I’d like to go.’ And it was basically, ‘Well, you’d have to show us,’” he continued. “So I recorded my own promos, my own videos. I had to audition basically to not be a good guy anymore. And if you go back and you watch these WWE Main Event matches I was having before joining Retribution, you would see the small details, the storytelling when I was slowly becoming more aggressive, a little bit more violent, having a little bit more of these heelish tendencies in my matches.”
