10 WWE Wrestlers HYPED Vince McMahon Is Gone

10. Mustafa Ali

So fed up with life under the previous WWE regime was Mustafa Ali that he publically tried to engineer and exit from the promotion in January, revealing, through social media, that he had requested his release.

This was subsequently denied by Vince McMahon, putting the former 205 Live standout's career on ice. A callous move, given the then-Chairman had demonstrated he was never going to push Ali, even when his believability saw him catch fire on SmackDown a few years prior. Why retain an unhappy wrestler you aren't going to use anyway?

So that other companies couldn't use him, most likely.

In any event, Ali returned to WWE in April, enjoyed a few weeks on television, and then promptly vanished again. Five months after trying to leave, everything was back to normal.

Ali is a multi-tool player whose WWE run has been waylaid by lengthy periods of inactivity and the horrendous failure that was the RETRIBUTION gimmick. By McMahon's standards, yes, he is undersized, but he is more than a super athlete, with his intermittent vignettes and infrequent promo time showing a captivating, believable talker, great character actor, and therefore somebody capable of playing at least a prominent upper-midcard role. Those opportunities are far likelier to come under Triple H, whose vision of wrestler isn't as narrow as his father-in-law's.