Mustafa Ali was scheduled to challenge Dominik Mysterio for the NXT North American Championship at No Mercy 2023, but got released from WWE before this match.
Trick Williams went on to earn Ali’s spot in the match and defeated Dirty Dom to win the Title
During an interview with Chris Van Vliet, Ali revealed that he was scheduled to win the North American Title:
“I don’t believe anything until it happens. But yeah, I don’t mind sharing. I think that was the plan. But mind you, the plan was actually to put the North American Championship on me months prior. But WWE is so smart with advertising and contract negotiations.
So NXT, the network deal was coming up. Shawn Michaels in NXT is awesome. He explains to me, ‘Hey, we’re gonna put the North American Championship on you.’ What happens is the network deal is coming up and this is when Judgment Day, specifically Dom, is just white hot. I mean, they’re still white hot right now, but Dom was next level right there.
So they were like, ‘Hey, everyone in Judgment Day has a championship. We want to put a championship on Dom, and we want to spike the ratings for NXT.’ Because the idea is if you spike the ratings with the contract negotiations this helps you. So this is when Seth was coming and Becky was coming.
I get a call from Shawn, ‘Hey, we’re actually putting the championship on Dom, and here’s a reason…’ I go yeah, that makes total sense, awesome, do it; I didn’t expect it coming.
Dom’s gonna come and challenge Wes Lee and beat him, great. So we do that. Then we do a three-way match, which was super fun with Dom, me and Wes Lee. And then [Shawn] is like, ‘Hey, Dom is needed back on the main roster’. Poor guy was working 6 days a week.
So I think that was a plan. Was it a surprise? No, because I saw WWE stock and WWE in general going this way (up), and my stock just going this way (down).”
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