sit-down chat with Chris Van Vliet<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\nAnother 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\u2019s locker room, but Undertaker was fine with them being in there.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you guys know Mustafa Ali and Undertaker hang out a lot?\u201d Ali jokingly said. \u201cThere 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, \u201819, something like that, and it was when Raw was doing the Barclays Center and the Manhattan Center at the same time\u2026 The Manhattan Center, there\u2019s a bunch of people that have paid a lot of money to attend this event. But here\u2019s the problem that they didn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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, \u2018I need matches and I need them now.\u2019 So Mark Carrano goes, \u2018Oh, I know, the cruiserweights!\u2019 So he stuffs a bunch of cruiserweights into a van and just sends us blindly to Manhattan Center. One, Hideo Itami is driving. He\u2019s like, \u2018Where am I going?\u2019 \u2018I don\u2019t know\u2026\u2019 So we\u2019re running upstairs and everyone\u2019s panicking, like, \u2018Go! Go! Go upstairs! Go upstairs!\u2019 So we\u2019re running with our gear because we\u2019re all coming from Barclays, and Triple H basically goes, \u2018Guys, the situation is there\u2019s 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.\u2019 \u2018Alright, cool.\u2019 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, \u2018Alright, maybe this, this\u2019 and you know, something quick, and the referee comes up and goes, \u2018Hey, guys, where are you changing?\u2019 Like, \u2018We\u2019re right here,\u2019 and then we look up, \u2018Private locker room for The Undertaker\u2026\u2019 Open the door sheepishly, me and Lince, \u2018Hello, sir. I\u2019m Ali, this is Lince. We\u2019ve done a huge mistake. We\u2019re just gonna grab our bags and we\u2019re gonna leave,\u2019 and we go to reach for our bags and he goes, \u2018Hey, you guys don\u2019t want to hang out with the motherf*cking Undertaker?\u2019 Before I could say anything, Lince Dorado goes, \u2018Hell yeah!\u2019 We just pulled up a chair next to The Deadman and we\u2019re changing\u2026 I told him I was a former police officer and he was like, \u2018Oh sh*t.\u2019 We\u2019re talking about this and that, and Lince was a former teacher \u2014 he\u2019s like, \u2018Isn\u2019t that crazy?\u2019 We\u2019re talking to The Undertaker about life, and then we kind of forgot that we had to go, and the ref was like, \u2018Guys! You\u2019re on!\u2019 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
If the quote in this article is used, please credit Insight with Chris Van Vliet with an H\/T to Fightful for the transcription.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The cruiserweights were needed for in-ring action. January 2018 saw WWE celebrate 25 years of Monday Night Raw.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-154216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}