Mustafa Ali Says Randy Orton Loved Their Match at WWE Hell in a Cell 2019

Mustafa Ali had a match with Randy Orton at WWE Hell in a Cell 2019, which Orton would end up winning. In an interview with the The Wrestling Classic, Ali spoke about how Orton felt about the match, noting that Orton loved it so much he joked that he should have put Ali over. However, Orton was hesitant about Ali’s counter to the RKO, in which he’d do a handstand to avoid getting hit. It ended up going smoothly.

Ali said: “So, Randy Orton’s the GOAT obviously. He’s the man. I pitched doing this reversal to him and at first, he wasn’t too keen on it, and I thought he was just trying to protect the RKO but then he pulled me aside and explained. He goes, ‘Hey, listen, I know you wanna do this handstand block thing.’ But he’s like, ‘If you f*ck that up, if you botch that,’ he’s like, ‘This crowd’s gonna boo you.’ He’s like, ‘They’re just gonna think that you took a really bad RKO,’ and he’s like, ‘You’re in this position where you don’t want –’ so I kind of got in my head for a second but, for some reason, something told me, I go, ‘Randy, I promise you, I won’t mess this up.’ So he was like, ‘Alright, we can try it’ so, we did it, hit it perfectly. Rolled him up, crowd came alive in there. Two seconds later, I get the RKO, and then Randy wins the match obviously but in the back, he kind of jokingly came up and put his arm around, he’s like, ‘Sh*t, we should have just put the kid over. That was great.’ He walks away, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, that would have been great.’ But yeah, Randy’s a consummate professional, he’s a great guy, he’s been a bit of a mentor to me. So, I’ll always have that moment with him and yeah, he’s the man.“