Mustafa Ali’s release from WWE last Thursday before the mass talent cuts caught a lot of people off guard.
It was a surprising departure due to the fact that Ali was slated to challenge Dominik Mysterio for the NXT North American Championship at NXT’s upcoming No Mercy pay-per-view event.
On today’s WWE NXT: No Mercy media call, Shawn Michaels talked about Ali’s release from the company. He said,
“I found out right before he did. I will say this, I’d be lying to you if I said it didn’t take us by surprise. That’s one thing I’m learning here is that main roster and NXT are totally separate rosters. I think the world of Mustafa, had a great working relationship with him in the time that he was here, I will miss him. That’s what we do here in NXT. We adjust. The fire drill is something that is a regular thing here in the WWE and certainly here at NXT. I feel we made a great pivot, we adjusted, and he’s an unbelievably creative and talented young man and no doubt his future looks incredibly bright and he’ll be successful. I’m going to miss him and I enjoyed working with him for the time that I did have him here. Now, Trick Williams is the beneficiary of that, and he has the biggest match of his life at No Mercy.”
