When Mustafa Ali found out that he was going to be the leader of Retribution

In an interview with metro.co.uk, Mustafa Ali commented on not being part of Wrestlemania 37 this year…

“I can point the finger at everybody, but I need to point the finger at myself and say, at the end of the day, it’s on you to become something so good, so powerful, so magnetic, that when they put the WrestleMania card together they go, ‘We have to have Ali on the show!’ If they feel, right now, that they don’t need to have me on the show, then they’re not gonna have me on the show. So I need to go back to the drawing board, I need to figure out something and get myself out there. At the end of the day, I don’t want a handout.”

Ali also talked about the Retribution storyline and when he found out he was going to be the leader of the group…

“The day of the reveal is when I found out that, ‘This is what you’re gonna be doing.’ 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. I did the best that I could with what I was given, there was a lot of amazing talent in that faction.”

In a separate interview with Comicbook.com, Ali talked about how he had ideas for being part of the group before it became a reality on television…

“I wasn’t around during the formation of the group…I found out I was joining Retribution that day, but I had been auditioning, so to speak. Again, man, storytelling, 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. 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.’ 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.”

WWE’s Mustafa Ali on RETRIBUTION shortcomings and missing out on WrestleMania

WWE superstar Mustafa Ali has insisted he needs to go ‘back to the drawing board’ after RETRIBUTION imploded and he was left without a WrestleMania 37 match. The 35-year-old star is one of the most talented members of the company’s vast roster – both in-ring and on the microphone – but once again he finds himself without a featured bout on the biggest show of the year.