Mustafa Ali Recalls Cruiserweights Being Rushed To Manhattan Center For WWE Raw 25, KENTA Driving Them To The Venue
The cruiserweights were needed for in-ring action.
January 2018 saw WWE celebrate 25 years of Monday Night Raw. They did so by having two events in New York at the same time. Raw was held at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, and another show was held at the Manhattan Center. The broadcast feed switched back and forth between the shows.
Mustafa Ali was part of the Manhattan Center show, and he recounted the experience during a sit-down chat with Chris Van Vliet. Ali said the cruiserweight wrestlers were put in a van at Barclays and rushed to the Manhattan Center to keep the crowd entertained during commercial breaks. Ali revealed that KENTA drove the van to the venue.
Another story from the night had to do with Ali and Lince Dorado rushing to find a room to change in. They ended up in The Undertaker’s locker room, but Undertaker was fine with them being in there.
“Do you guys know Mustafa Ali and Undertaker hang out a lot?” Ali jokingly said. “There was an anniversary show for Raw. I think it was the 25th anniversary. I could be wrong, but one of those. It was like 2018, ‘19, something like that, and it was when Raw was doing the Barclays Center and the Manhattan Center at the same time… The Manhattan Center, 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 promos. There were 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 in the Barclays. He goes, ‘I need matches and I need them now.’ So Mark Carrano goes, ‘Oh, I know, the cruiserweights!’ So he stuffs a bunch of cruiserweights into a van and just sends us blindly to Manhattan Center. One, Hideo Itami is driving. He’s like, ‘Where am I going?’ ‘I don’t know…’ So we’re running upstairs and everyone’s panicking, like, ‘Go! Go! Go upstairs! Go upstairs!’ So we’re running with our gear because we’re all coming from Barclays, and Triple H basically goes, ‘Guys, the situation is there’s no matches during the commercial break. I just need you guys to go out there and do the craziest sh*t. But do it like two or three minutes.’ ‘Alright, cool.’ So I was wrestling Lince Dorado, and we run upstairs and we have our bags so we just open this door and we throw our bags down, we close the door, we start talking, like, ‘Alright, maybe this, this’ and you know, something quick, and the referee comes up and goes, ‘Hey, guys, where are you changing?’ Like, ‘We’re 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. We’ve done a huge mistake. We’re just gonna grab our bags and we’re gonna leave,’ and 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 Dorado goes, ‘Hell yeah!’ We just pulled up a chair next to The Deadman and we’re changing… I told him I was a former police officer and he was like, ‘Oh sh*t.’ We’re talking about this and that, and Lince was a former teacher — 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, and the ref was like, ‘Guys! You’re on!’ So we just ran out and did our match, and then, yeah, it was just one of those wild experiences that The Undertaker told me to come hang out with him.”
Mustafa Ali is currently signed with TNA and re-upped with the promotion in January 2026. A live episode of Thursday Night iMPACT is airing on AMC on 3/5, and Fightful will have coverage of that show.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit Insight with Chris Van Vliet with an H/T to Fightful for the transcription.
