Since being moved from
205 Live to
SmackDown Live, Mustafa Ali's star has been on the rise. However, many fans were shocked when he lost his first name and some wondered if it was WWE's way of making him sound less...foreign.
It has, of course, become commonplace for WWE Superstars to lose their first or last names but what does Ali make of the change?
"I can tell you there's been a dramatic vocal increase of my name getting chanted during matches because it's Ali,", he revealed. "As a performer, sometimes I'd be wrestling and one side of the ring would be chanting Mustafa, while the other side of the ring would be chanting Ali and then it just gets muzzled out because no one knows what to chant."
Asked whether the chance bothers him, he added:
"Ever since they dropped my first name, the chants have gotten louder I've noticed. And it can be for a number of reasons, it's easy to remember, what not. Mustafa had a close meaning to me, but at the end of the day, like I said on social media, I'll bring it up again, the name might have changed, but the man behind the name hasn't. I'm still Ali. I'm still the same person and to me, that's what's most important. WWE isn't making me change. I'm the same guy that broke it on 205 Live, I'm the same guy on social media. They're not changing who I am as a person. So the name change, no, it doesn't bother me."
That's a fair point and the name change more than likely won't matter in the long run. After all, it didn't hurt the likes of Alexander Rusev, Antonio Cesaro, and Andrade "Cien" Almas and Ali is one of the favourites heading into this Sunday's Money in the Bank ladder match.