Cruz Montana Looks Back On Feud With Mustafa Ali In TNA: “We Made Magic”

A look back at Cruz Montana and Mustafa Ali’s program.

There was a portion of 2025 on TNA Wrestling programming in which Mustafa Ali and current WWE talent Cruz Montana a.k.a. Mike Santana were feuding.

Montana looked back on that during his appearance on Complex Graps. He said that’s one program that he would want new fans of his to go back and watch. He spoke about how much he put into that feud, which delved into his past addiction issues.

Montana recounted sitting everyone down beforehand and saying that if they were going to go the route of touching on his past, it needed to be done correctly.

“I’d honestly have to say go back and watch the feud I had with Mustafa Ali, from TNA. Go back and watch that story. That was a real story. That was real, and then, aside from the matches, but just the story that we were telling and it hit home, and it was something very personal to me, and I put a lot into that, as far as myself and my personal life and stuff like that. It’s been no secret — I’ve been very open about my struggles with addiction and getting clean and stuff like that so, yeah, I think if I had to choose one off the top… go back and watch that; that series that we had.” Montana continued, “Even the first match we had in El Paso. I think it was at Sacrifice or something. But, even that first match… we were going. The crowd was insane. We were going at each other’s throats… Then the one we had later on with the weapons and all the craziness or whatever… A lot of the promos we did. Just everything. Production was so on point with everything and him and I, we legit sat down and really put a lot of thought into this and the way it was shot… Just everything. It was very meticulous because for me… I sat everyone down — and I’ll give you guys a little insider — I sat everyone down before we started filming anything and I was like, ‘Listen, this is something that’s very, very serious to me. If we’re gonna use this and we’re gonna really go all in on this, we’re gonna do it right,’ and I have a lot of respect for the recovery community and this is part of my life… everyone was on board and everyone did an amazing job and we told a hell of a story and we made magic.”

Montana was in the main event of the 8/11 NXT on The CW, but his number one contender’s match was thrown out after the arrival of Zilla Fatu. To read Montana’s comments about that, click here.

If the quote in this article is used, please credit Complex Graps with an H/T to Fightful for the transcription.