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Mansoor has had quite an exciting couple of weeks. He announced in late April that he had recently gotten married. Then, about a week later, he found out he was being assigned to Monday Night RAW. Oh, and his first match was going to be against Sheamus for the United States Championship.
You really can't ask for much more than that in a week's time, can you? Well, actually, if you're Mansoor, you can:
"I could ask for Humberto Carrillo to wait like five or ten minutes," Mansoor told Sportskeeda Wrestling. "If I was going to lose, I wanted to lose like a man. I wanted to have a decisive ending to that match to determine who was the better competitor."
Take his words with a grain of salt as he seemed to be in character, but during this exclusive conversation with Sportskeeda Wrestling, Mansoor expressed some frustration with the way his match with Sheamus ended on Monday night.
Heading into his bout with the Celtic Warrior, Mansoor was riding a 49 match win streak that dated back to 2019. It came to an end when Humberto Carrillo, who had been the victim of multiple attacks at the hands of Sheamus in recent weeks, came down to the ring to get some revenge on the United States Champion. Mansoor's winning streak was snapped with a loss via disqualification:
"Yeah! How anticlimactic is that!?" Mansoor exclaimed. "I'm trying not to get hot about it. I don't want to get mad at Humberto. Like, I get it. He was mad at Sheamus. Sheamus has been punking him and attacking him backstage and doing all these things for the past few weeks. Like, I get it. But you really couldn't have waited just a little longer?"
Mansoor admitted that he was a little bit disappointed to see his streak come to an end the way that it did, but when it was all said and done, he was happy that it happened. He mentioned how the streak really brought an edge to both himself and his competition:
"The whole streak thing was really crazy. Cause I didn't even notice it until someone pointed it out around like 30. And that's when it started to kind of change gears for me, because suddenly I had something that I was defending," Mansoor said. "Like, suddenly there were higher stakes to every one of my matches. On 205 Live. On Main Event. And it was like, 'Okay, yeah. This is something that I can really build.' And it brought the best out of my opponents too. Guys like Drew Gulak, and on 205, guys like August Grey, Curt Stallion, Ever-Rise. They wanted to break that streak and they wanted to be the guy who broke that streak. So they were bringing next level intensity and competitiveness that I really enjoyed."
While the streak is now over, Mansoor says he has something more important than a winning streak on his mind. He's coming after Sheamus and that United States Championship. Chances are he'll have to deal with Humberto Carrillo as well, but he's ready for anything now that he's made it to Monday Night RAW.
Moving to RAW was not too big for Mansoor after years of development
Mansoor signed with the WWE in 2018, making him the first-ever Saudi-Arabian-born Superstar in company history. That alone carries an enormous amount of pressure. But Mansoor has proven time and again that no moment or stage has been too big for him.
He credits his time at the WWE Performance Center, on NXT, 205 Live and Main Event, and large-scale events like Super ShowDown, for getting him prepared for his "main roster" debut.
Mansoor told Sportskeeda Wrestling that his last three years with WWE have been invaluable because that time adequately prepared him for when he got his chance to perform for the first time as a RAW Superstar:
"I was nervous. I had butterflies in my stomach. I felt like I was going to throw up the whole night," Mansoor said. "This is it. This is my first impression. If I don't match the intensity... a guy like Sheamus, who is probably going to beat the tar out of me, he's probably going to knock a tooth out. Probably the hardest hitting, toughest guy in the company. If I don't match that aggression, I'm dead in the water. And I was behind the curtain and then my music hit and I walked out and it was gone. I got in the ring and the bell rang and it was like, 'yeah, this is what I was meant to do.'"
Part of the initial nervousness probably came from a lack of time to fully take in and process that he was about to make his RAW debut. Mansoor said he found out he was being brought over to the Red Brand that day.
He had an idea that they were looking at him for a potential roster spot after he started working Main Event tapings inside the ThunderDome. However, he still called the moment he found out shell shocking.
Now that he's on Monday Night RAW, the work won't stop for Mansoor. It only intensifies:
"I really want to prove is that I'm a guy who can come out there every single week and put on a hell of a show and put on a hell of a match," Mansoor said. "No matter what beatings I take, no matter how hard I get hit, I'm the guy that always comes back and finds a way to pull through. That's the reputation that I've tried to establish for myself. And I want to be in that locker room on a roster full of guys... of legends, some of whom I was watching as early as when I was in high school, and prove that I belong and that I fit in. I would really like to show the world that I deserve to be a RAW Superstar."
So forget about that 49 match winning streak. It may have been fun while it lasted, but Mansoor is ready to break some new ground on Monday Night RAW.
Check out our entire conversation with Mansoor in the video above. Also, follow Sportskeeda Wrestling on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube for more exclusive interviews in the future.
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