Shawn Michaels On When He Learned About Mustafa Ali’s Release, Thinks the World Of Him

Shawn Michaels says he was as surprised by Mustafa Ali’s WWE release as everyone else. Ali was reported, Ali was released last week among the spate of WWE and NXT releases, despite having a scheduled match against Dominik Mysterio for the NXT North American Championship at No Mercy.

Trick Williams is now set to face Dominik at Saturday’s show, and on the NXT No Mercy media call Michaels talked about Ali’s release and more. You can see some highlights below, per Fightful:

On finding out about Ali’s release: “I found out right before he did. I will say this, I’d be lying to you if I said it didn’t take us by surprise. That’s one thing I’m learning here is that main roster and NXT are totally separate rosters.”

On Ali: I think the world of Mustafa, had a great working relationship with him in the time that he was here, I will miss him. That’s what we do here in NXT. We adjust. The fire drill is something that is a regular thing here in the WWE and certainly here at NXT. I feel we made a great pivot, we adjusted, and he’s an unbelievably creative and talented young man and no doubt his future looks incredibly bright and he’ll be successful. I’m going to miss him and I enjoyed working with him for the time that I did have him here. Now, Trick Williams is the beneficiary of that, and he has the biggest match of his life at No Mercy.”