Ali Doesn’t Mind His Name Change: ‘Now People Know Who I Am’

In an interview with Fightful, Ali said he doesn’t mind that WWE shortened his name because at least it gives the fans something easy to chant, which seemed to be an issue before. Here are highlights:

On his name change: “The name might’ve changed, but the person behind it doesn’t. And it’s all good, know what I mean? Now it’s easy. Now people know who I am. You know what really was happening, though? One side of the crowd would chant “Mustafa,” and the other side would [chant] “Ali,” and it was just a lot of confusion. Now there’s no confusion.”

On the setbacks he’s had this year: “I think this year has been a huge rollercoaster for me. I went from the guy that was never on a pay-per-view to the guy that was in the main event at Money in the Bank, I pinned the WWE Champion at the time, Daniel Bryan. And yeah, I felt like I was being heavily featured and everything was going my way, and then obviously this huge injury comes up and completely takes me out of the title picture. And I’ve been back for a few months and I just feel like I can’t get my feet underneath me for some reason. And it’s just an issue of there’s X amount of hours and so much talent, you know what I mean? I tell everybody that I’ve climbed that mountain once and that opportunity is there, I just have to climb it again.”