WWE: Why it’s important for Ali to be Mustafa

WWE have now officially given Ali back his original name of Mustafa. This is important because the name Mustafa highlights everything Ali has set out to do both as a character and as a real person.

“What’s in a name,” asked William Shakespeare as he penned Romeo and Juliet. “That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.” Now, obviously, Shakespeare did not have the scope of brevity to envision how his quote could be applied in the context of WWE or even in the context of 1595’s understanding of wrestling, but it’s a question that still begs to be asked in 2019: what is in a name?

There’s several possible answers and different people will apply different levels of importance to their name for difference reasons. However, if you ask me, I’d say power. There is power in a name, in that the right name under the right circumstance can be powerful enough to produce change. And depending on what a person does with their name and how they use it, they could even change how others view the negative connotations typically associated with that name. This is why the name “Mustafa” has always been so essential to the Ali character.

Ali has always spoken in depth in personal interviews and even some onscreen promos about his mission to shatter the stereotypes associated with not only people who look like him, but specifically how wrestling fans view wrestlers who look like him, referring to the classic heel foreigner character associated with The Iron Sheik, Muhammad Hassan, Shawn Daivari, etc.

Ali’s pre-WWE career started in a similar vain when he originally wrestled in a traditional Arabic headdress as Prince Mustafa Ali from Saudi Arabia, but after seeing a small boy in the crowd of an independent show look at him with sheer “hate” in his eyes, the idea of portraying such a character started to hit Ali a little differently. “I just taught this kid to hate people who look like me.”

Since arriving to WWE, Ali’s mission as “The Light” has been to offer fans a role model to look up to. The kind of role model who looked like him that he didn’t have when he was a kid. In many ways, his name alone plays a big part in achieving that sort of positivity in the wrestling realm.

“Ali” is an Arabic name means “champion” or “elevate.” Meanwhile, “Mustafa” – which I believe to be the most essential part of this wrestler’s name – translates to “The Chosen One,” or “appointed” or “selected.”

Beyond just these derivatives fitting the Mustafa Ali character and his mission statement to a tee, Mustafa is a name is closely associated to the “bad guys” many of us were raised to hate in a post-9/11 world. As the man points out himself in the above video, “My name is Mustafa Ali … and your mind already starts to make assumptions.”

As Mustafa, the man behind the character is on a request to reappropriate how certain people may view that name negatively in the same way that Muhammad Ali reappropriated how we see the name “Ali.”

Even in a pre-9/11 world, I’d imagine people viewed the name Ali as something different and judged it as such when Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali once he converted to the Islam faith. But in time, as he gained success and adoration from fans, people viewed his name a little differently.

Already, Mustafa Ali has done the same in his short time with WWE. When he first debuted for the Cruiserweight Classic and in his first few matches, audiences were quick to boo him based on his name and appearance alone, if only because fans in 2016 were pre-conditioned at that point to boo people who looked like Ali. Again, because of the foreigner heel stereotype.

However, the more that people learned of Ali’s story and watched his awe-inspiring in-ring ability, the man grew a following. Suddenly, it didn’t matter how he looked because he was a great wrestler and, overall, a stand up guy from the looks of it.

While his mission statement remained the same when he briefly lost his first name back in March, that mission statement reads all the more powerful now that WWE have given it back to him. Now, rather than a child with hate in his eyes, Mustafa Ali can look in the crowd to see a cavalcade of children adoring him, regardless of what his name is or how he looks. That’s growth. That’s power. That’s change.