Mustafa Ali On Wanting to Use WWE to End Stereotyping, His Police Job Finding Out About WWE CWC Participation

WWE 205 Live star Mustafa Ali, who will face Cedric Alexander for the vacant Cruiserweight Title at WrestleMania 34 on Sunday, spoke with ESPN ahead of the PPV and below are some interview highlights.

On wanting use his time WWE to help put an end to sterotypes:

“My name doesn’t exactly shout babyface. Just take a look at anything you do,” he said. “Go to the movies, and you see a guy with a turban. He’s a terrorist, right? We’re getting better, but we have so much more to do.”

“I’ve been told that to see someone like me on TV, someone [with a foreign name]who’s not the bad guy but rather an American who comes out with a smile and high-fiving the fans, is encouraging,” Ali said. “It gives me hope.”

The article also goes on to cover Ali’s fomer job as a Chicago police officer, and during the interview Ali recalls a funny story about telling the force he was going on “vacation”, when really he was going to wrestle in the WWE Cruiserweight Classic:

“When I eventually came back to roll call, everyone was staring and smirking at me,” Ali said. “I said, ‘What’s going on?’ And they said, ‘How was your vacation?’ I told them it was a lot of fun, but they kept pressing. ‘Where did you say you went again? Who did you go with?’ She took a picture and sent it around to everyone, so yeah, they eventually found out.”