Mustafa Ali really thought he would be wrestling Kofi Kingston at WrestleMania 37

It wasn’t long ago that Mustafa Ali was the leader of RETRIBUTION and building to a feud with Kofi Kingston, who famously filled in for an injured Ali at Elimination Chamber a couple years ago and turned that into winning the WWE championship at WrestleMania 35. Were it not for his injury, could Ali have seen that same success? Maybe!

Which means a story pitting a heel Ali, bitter over how that played out, taking on a babyface Kingston writes itself. And we were getting to that, or at least it seemed that way.

Then, abruptly, Ali was yelling at everyone in RETRIBUTION and blaming them for his failures so much that he was beaten up and kicked out of the group. Kingston, for his part, won the Raw tag team titles with Xavier Woods. They’re scheduled to wrestle AJ Styles & Omos for those belts at WrestleMania 37 on April 10, 2021, in Tampa, Florida. Ali isn’t even booked for the big show, instead scheduled to take part in the “WrestleMania SmackDown” show on April 9 in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal.

As he told Metro.co.uk, Ali thought he’d get that singles match at WrestleMania:

“The story was presented and I really thought that was the direction we might be going for in this year’s WrestleMania. Again, like I said, things change and other things take priority sometimes. We almost got to it, so I will try to get to it again. There’s so much real emotion that I can just bring up and bring out in promos leading to that match. When we do do it, I hope we’re allowed to do it right because I feel like it’d be one hell of a story.”

It would have been one hell of a story. It’s too bad we aren’t getting it.