Real Reason Ex-WWE Star Was Removed From Saudi Arabia Shows

WWE

Former WWE star Mansoor was a fixture on four Saudi Arabia shows and feared for his future when he stopped featuring on the PLEs.

Mansoor was signed to a WWE contract having taken part in a tryout at the first Saudi Arabia show, the Greatest Royal Rumble in 2018.

The Saudi Arabia-born star would return to the premium live events in 2019, 2020 and 2021 but see no action on the shows after that.

In an interview on Cafe de Rene, Mansoor spoke about his absence from Saudi Arabia shows and how he thought it signalled the end of his WWE career, saying:

“I wasn’t doing anything and then the next Saudi show coming was Elimination Chamber and I wasn’t doing anything. Every week, wasn’t doing (anything). I was like, ‘God, what’s gonna happen? I gotta talk to Vince.’

“The week before Saudi, I go up to John Cone. He works in Talent Relations now and I said, ‘Hey John! You know, curious. Am I on the flight list to go to Saudi Arabia?’

“And John looked at me and he’s such a nice guy with these doe eyes and he said, ‘Ah, sorry Mansoor but currently no’ and I put my hand on his shoulder and I said, ‘Well John, it was nice knowing you.’ I was convinced that was it for me. I was getting fired. If I wasn’t the Saudi guy anymore, what the hell was I?”

Mansoor would go on to discuss his interaction with Vince McMahon at the gorilla position, saying:

“So, Vince was busy all day. So, everybody’s telling me, ‘Look, just go to him during commercial. He’s in Gorilla, he’s watching the show. What’s he doing during commercial? He’s free. Go talk to him.’

“I work up the nerve and I go into Gorilla. It’s Bruce Prichard and Vince McMahon and I finally go up to Vince and I say, ‘Sir, do you have a moment?’

“He looks at me like this (straight-faced), and he twists all the knobs of every monitor and mutes the show until it’s dead silent and you could hear a mouse piss on cotton, and everybody is looking right at me and Vince looks at me and he says, ‘What?’

“I say, ‘Sir, I just found out that I wasn’t booked for the next Saudi show. I just wanted to know is there anything I could have done or anything I should work on so that I can be on the next one?’

“He says, ‘You don’t have to be on every Saudi show, right?’ And I go, ‘Yes sir’ and he goes, ‘Okay, good’ and he puts the volume back on and turns and looks back at the monitor and I’m just like, my heart sunk into my asshole. I was done. I was ready for my career to be over.”

Mansoor would go on to reveal how he discovered he was going to be getting a male model character, going so far as to turn up at McMahon’s office with a pitch of his own, stating:

“I go into Vince’s office a couple of weeks after that and I say, I gotta pretend like I don’t know. So I go in with a pitch, I had a pitch ready. I come in with my iPad, with a video, I cut a promo with this new character and just when I come in, I say, ‘Sir! I’ve got it.’

“He says, ‘Put that sh*t away.’ So I put away the iPad (Mansoor laughed)… Him and Johnny Ace are in the room and he says, ‘Listen, you’re gonna be a male model with Mace. Makes sense, right? You’re a couple of good-looking young men.’

“I’m like, ‘Oh, Vince! You’re making me blush,’ and I’m like, ‘Well sir, I mean is this gonna affect the Saudi thing at all?’ And he was like, ‘No, no, no, no, no. Listen, you’re two straight male models…’ Hetero, completely… we love women, great. But we just also happen to love fashion and taking care of our skin. Makes total sense.”

He would reveal a comment that McMahon made to him during this conversation about the Saudi Arabia shows, adding:

“When Vince (McMahon) was telling me about the male model stuff, he was like, ‘Listen, I wanna address why you’re not on the Saudi shows anymore’ and I was like, ‘Yes, please. Did I do something wrong?’

“And he’s like, ‘No. They just communicated to me that they don’t really need you on the show. They want stars.’ I was like, ‘Oh!’ F**k. Like, damn! I see how it is. I think for them, they just wanted the big names.”

Having been drafted to SmackDown in 2021, he would eventually be repacked as mån.sôör in Maximum Male Models.

Both ma.çé and mån.sôör were released from their WWE contracts on September 21, 2023.

Transcript from Post Wrestling.

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• Mansoor
• saudi arabia
• Vince McMahon
• wwe

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