And so, another one goes down. WWE is a little weird about their obsession with branding at times. They love little more than naming everyone in one way or another and a lot of the time it seems to be some rather random changes. One of their favorite moves as of late seems to be taking away wrestlers’ first names, which is now the case all over again with a pretty new star.
WWE.com has recently changed Mustafa Ali’s name to just Ali, making him the latest in a series move instances of wrestlers losing their first name for reasons that aren’t clear. Some previous names to undergo this treatment include Adrian Neville, Elias Samson, Antonio Cesaro and Big E. Langston among others. Ali debuted on the main roster late last year but spent some time on the injured list.
He can work well with two names. Check out one of Ali’s first main roster appearances:
Opinion: I’m not sure what to think of this, though I’d really love to know the mentality behind this. Is it really just a marketing thing? Is Ali the kind of name that is so much easier to push than the full two name version? It seems like the kind of thing that is being completely overthought and comes off as more of a stupid idea than anything else. Hopefully this gets changed back, which has been the case before.
Do you want Ali to get his full name back? Who do you think will be the next name changed? Let us know in the comments below.
Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his Amazon author page with 28 wrestling books. His latest book is the the Complete 2000 Monday Nitro and Thunder Reviews Part 1.
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