This past week, the WWE releases we reported were coming manifested. Within an eight-hour or so period, WWE released notable names like Mustafa Ali, Shelton Benjamin, Dolph Ziggler, Dana Brooke, and more. While many fans were taken off-guard by the releases, two of them actually caught Shawn Michaels, by surprise.
On today’s WWE NXT No Mercy media call, Michaels was asked about Ali’s release and the fact he teased he would be appearing on this past Monday’s Raw.
“I’d be lying to you if it didn’t take us by surprise,” Michaels revealed. “I think the world of Mustafa. I had a great working relationship with him in the time that he was here. I will miss him. But one of the things, again, that’s what we do here in NXT. We adjust we are, again; as I’ve mentioned to you guys before, the fire drill is something that is a regular thing here in the WWE and certainly here in NXT.
“So I feel like we’ve made a great pivot, we adjusted. And again, Mustafa is a creative and talented young man. I have no doubt that his future looks incredibly bright, and he’ll be successful. I’m gonna miss him. I enjoyed working with him for the time that I did have him here.”
Shortly after, Michaels was pressed about how other releases from the WWE roster affected any immediate plans he had.
“Dana Brooke, obviously, is something that caught us by surprise a little bit because we had kind of a nice story going on there,” he said. “And I’ll say this, and I hope, I hope to God it doesn’t sound insensitive. It’s just that this is not the first time that we’ve gone through this, and it is something that, I’ll say this, in my world now, I guess maybe I’ve grown a little bit that these things don’t throw me into chaos. I don’t get too nervous. I don’t get too upset. We try not to allow the highs it take us too high and the lows to take us down too low. So yeah, we’ve made adjustments.”
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