NXT star Mansoor Al Shehail (just known as Mansoor) recently interviewed with Esquire Middle East to talk all things pro wrestling. Check out the highlights below:
Being the first Saudi Arabian competitor for WWE:
No, not really. I don’t really think about it much. I feel like the bigger the stage the more comfortable I feel. I enjoy the feeling of being in centre of the ring watched by tens of thousands of people. The first time that happened was at [the WWE live event] the Greatest Royal Rumble in Jeddah. I was not even part of the company and I was in the ring as part of the try-out in front of a packed stadium. I got on the microphone and spoke to the audience and, for some reason, it was the least amount of nerves I have ever had in wrestling. I’ve wrestled in front of crowds of fifty people in a school gym before, and that is always more nerve-racking.
Why he chose wrestling as a career:
I grew up in Saudi, and my older brother Talal introduced me to the WWE and I was a huge fan. All my friends were wresting friends, and we played so much No Mercy on the Nintendo 64, and Smackdown! Here Comes The Pain on Playstation. It was always something that was in my life. It’s what I feel I was born to do. Someone once said to me, “why do you like wrestling more than acting, it’s the same thing.” It’s not the same thing, because there are a million Romeos and a million Juliets, but there is only one Jeff Hardy.
What a WWE tryout is like:
There is nothing like wrestling in terms of cardio and conditioning. You can go on the treadmill, you can run laps, but when you have to do deadlift sandbags and slam them, and literally carry people around the ring. That stuff is almost exclusive to what we do. At the tryouts I remember thinking ‘this is it, my one shot at my dream’. I have never put myself through so much. The physical intensity for the workouts we did in the ring were brutal, and as the only person there with previous wrestling experience I didn’t just need to do them well, I needed to do them better than anyone else.
The cultural impact WWE has set with their Saudi Arabian events:
People have a lot of opinions about the Saudi shows, in terms of cultural impact that can only happen when the culture is more familiar with what wrestling is. My nieces, who live in Riyadh, are big wrestling fans, and I want them to be able to go to wrestling shows and see the women wrestlers perform. We saw it in Abu Dhabi with Sasha Banks and Alexa Bliss, but progress is like a staircase, you can’t jump every step. When it comes to a country’s culture you have to slowly integrate. Personally, I truly do believe we will see women performing in Saudi Arabia in a WWE ring one day.
Check out the full interview here.
