Creating a sudden heel turn is easy: all you need is a steel chair. Or a kendo stick. Or a window.
In a pinch, in fact, you need nothing but two treacherous hands and a darkened heart.
Admittedly, for a heel turn based on betrayal it helps to have a friendship to betray, and those are harder to come by. Those take time to build: months or years of effort, dozens or hundreds of happy moments strung like beads to create something valuable that people care about. There are things besides friendship you can destroy: some heel turns are a rejection of the love of the fans, a figurative steel chair to the relationship built over time between wrestler and audience. But once you’ve got either a friendship or the fans’ love to work with, the most powerful heel turns have an elegant simplicity at their base.
A sudden face turn? That’s a lot trickier to pull off. Audiences are ready to be shocked, to be horrified, to be shattered in an instant. They’re slower to trust, to love, to open their bruised hearts one more time. That’s why most face turns are more gradual, giving the audience time to get used to their growing affection. Wrestling fans are like skittish cats, distrustful of sudden apologies, quick changes of heart. We look sidewise at the coaxing open hand and remember being kicked before and sidle away nervously, waiting for more certain proof. Face turns require careful timing and structure and a decent amount of sheer luck. Pulling one off over the course of a single match is a real challenge.
This is the story of one of my favorite sudden face turns: Mustafa Ali, the Heart of 205 Live.
Ali’s WWE story begins in 2016, in the Cruiserweight Classic. He wasn’t even originally in it; he was an alternate called in at the last minute when another wrestler didn’t make the weight limit. In fact, as he will mention later, he was getting ready to retire from wrestling altogether when the call came. So here he is in the Cruiserweight Classic, a last-second addition.
In the introduction video for the Cruiserweight Classic, Ali’s very first words are “My name is Mustafa Ali, and I’m from Chicago.” But the wrestlers for the CWC generally wrestle representing the country their parents hail from, their heritage: T.J. Perkins represents the Philippines, for example. So Mustafa Ali comes out under the Pakistani flag, billed as “representing Pakistan.”
The crowd starts booing him before he even reaches the ring, before he can do anything at all.
His angry and defiant reaction to the booing may be totally understandable, but it still serves to establish him as the bad guy, especially when up against Lince Dorado, a high-flying luchador in a cat mask and golden cape. Nevertheless, one gets the feeling there was still a chance for things to go differently: when Dorado steps forward for the required pre-match handshake, Ali takes a moment to stare out at the crowd’s knee-jerk rejection before choosing to disdainfully slap his opponent’s hand away.
It’s a vicious cycle, where the crowd’s negative behavior leads to negative actions from Ali, which makes the crowd dislike him more, which makes him lash out more, and on and on. It’s a cycle we’ve seen a thousand times.
From then on in, he wrestles the match in a familiar bad form, taunting and tormenting Dorado. It’s a quick, engaging match, full of daring moves and wild action, and by the middle of it a good third or so of the audience is chanting Ali’s name in counterpoint to Dorado’s; by the end and Ali’s loss most of them are chanting “This is awesome.” But the narrative has cemented him as a heel, and when he appears in NXT a few weeks later to wrestle Hideo Itami, he stays in that angry and contemptuous mode.
When 205 Live gets started, Ali becomes part of its regular cast, and one that the writers have plans for. Before his first match, on the third episode in December 2016, he films an introduction video in which he talks about how people judge him by his name and background and assume the worst of him: “From the moment you hear my name–Mustafa Ali–you’ve already made up your mind about me, about who I am and what I’m all about,” he announces.
It’s heelish on the surface, delivered in sharp, angry fashion with an implication that he’s closed his heart against the WWE audience and intends to be cruel and ruthless in response. But the words themselves are ambivalent, and will take on a distinctly different tone in just a few weeks.
But first he’s got a match against Lince Dorado again, the same luchador that defeated him in the Cruiserweight Classic. Once again he’s billed as from Pakistan, once again the audience boos him before he can do a thing beyond step out into the light.
But there’s a slight difference here, at both the beginning and the end of the match, from their first match in the CWC.
In the CWC, Ali slapped Dorado’s hand away. In his first 205 Live match, however, he shakes Dorado’s hand, setting up a different dynamic from his first moments. The match itself is excellent again, and—unlike his first matches, which have all been losses so far—this one ends in a double count-out, so neither of them are the winner. Ali and Dorado are presented as equally matched, worthy of respect—though it’s a respect Ali doesn’t grant in return yet, because when Dorado extends his hand again after the bell rings, Ali refuses the gesture and strikes him down, leaving angrily, to the sound of the crowd’s anger. Still locked in that cycle.
So he’s still distinctly a heel after his first appearance on 205 Live, clearly established as an bitter person with a chip on his shoulder. The narrative is careful to define him as a heel for a very specific reason: because otherwise what happens in his next appearance won’t have impact.
Two weeks later, 205 Live is in Mustafa Ali’s hometown of Chicago. And instead of being introduced as from Pakistan, he’s introduced as from Chicago, immediately priming even the members of the audience who don’t already know him to like him.
And they do, right away, setting in motion a positive feedback loop where Mustafa responds to their applause by lighting up, his smile eliciting more cheers.
Unfortunately the match itself is a truncated, limping thing, because his opponent gets injured early (may have, in fact, started the match injured without informing anyone) and the referee soon calls the bout to an abrupt end. One gets the feeling it should have been longer, and should have given the Chicago audience more chances to rally behind Ali, strengthening that positive emotional spiral. Still, even this shortened version is enough to get the audience cheering for him as they already wanted to do, and when Ali wins his first WWE match with his stunning inverted-450-splash finisher, they’re smitten.
Alight with victory, Ali stands in the middle of the ring and delivers a beautiful promo in which he informs the Chicago crowd that their faith in him and their positive energy have changed his heart. “When I came to 205 Live, I believed I had to prove the WWE Universe wrong,” he says.
“It’s not a perfect world,” Ali continues, “but with each and every victory that I pile up here on 205 Live, I’m gonna let that speak for itself.” That introductory video from a few weeks ago feels very different after that: not bitter but defensive, steeled against further hurt and rejection. And honestly, who can’t empathize with having an angry, wounded heart after people judge you unfairly? But this moment sets in motion a more positive cycle, an implied promise that as long as we in the audience keep our hearts open to Mustafa Ali, he will keep his heart open to us.
The very next week, Mustafa Ali wrestles Noam Dar. This time he’s introduced as from Pakistan, not from Chicago.
This is a test of the audience. Did last week’s promo take root? In front of a non-hometown crowd, introduced as a foreigner, will they still cheer him, or will they revert to booing? If they boo him reflexively, they’ll reverse the cycle and prove that indeed, there’s no overcoming those knee-jerk prejudices.
The match is a full match this time; Dar puts any variety of vicious submission holds on him; Ali suffers greatly.
And the audience does cheer for him.
It was a hugely risky narrative move: a face turn that didn’t just involve the audience, but absolutely required the audience in order to work. Other face turns, the new babyface could just continue acting differently and hope that it sinks in. But by the terms Ali’s story set, if the audience had rejected him, it all would have failed. If the fans had decided to boo him, they’d have proven that his faith and hope were a foolish waste. But they didn’t, and the result is one of the most hopeful character arcs I’ve ever seen in wrestling: a hope that hearts can be opened, that prejudice can be countered, that cycles of hate and ignorance can be reversed.
A sudden heel turn, however brilliant and emotional, is a simple thing at its heart: take a relationship and add betrayal. A sudden face turn is a trickier thing: creating a relationship is more intricate and complex. An abrupt heel turn rips horror and grief from an audience despite themselves; an abrupt face turn is more collaborative, something an audience can easily destroy by simply not caring. They’re hard to do well. When they do succeed, they can build something that means the world to the people who were part of it.
As 205 Live progresses, the arc of Ali’s career bends ever upward; a gradual, organic climb that still always seems slower than we want it to be. Ali has amazing, satisfying feuds with Drew Gulak, with Neville, with Buddy Murphy, with Hideo Itami. He dazzles audiences with his astonishingly fluid, high-flying moves:
He displays an absolute genius for passionate impromptu promos, captured on his phone and posted on Twitter or on 205 Live proper:
He comes to be called the Heart of 205 Live, and it feels right, a title earned fairly through years of hard work and inspiration to fans.
At WrestleMania 2018, Ali takes on Cedric Alexander in a match for the vacant Cruiserweight title. Alexander is a friend of his, another wrestler who’s been in 205 Live from the very beginning, and the two of them together are called the Heart and Soul of 205 Live. Their match is one of the best on the WrestleMania card despite being short and—inexplicably, infuriatingly—interrupted by a promotion for another match. Ali loses, but he and Alexander remain friends, and their friendship will continue to be strengthened and built through 2018 and Alexander’s reign. When Alexander does eventually lose the title and begins a painful, confidence-rattling losing streak, Ali will step up and challenge Buddy Murphy, the man who took the title from his friend.
Ali and Murphy’s upcoming clash is the only title match on the Survivor Series card, and it has a chance to be an absolute show-stealer. Whether Ali wins or loses, it’s the continuation of years of character work, a slow-burning climb to glory that’s one of the most involving things in wrestling today. If you’ve been paying attention to the cruiserweights, you know what I mean already. If you haven’t been paying attention to the cruiserweights, I promise that if you open your heart to this match, it will reward you.
Opening your heart is a risk: in wrestling, in life, in everything. It’s probably going to take a chairshot or two if you leave it vulnerable. But if you close it, you might not be able to see the moment that someone steps quietly from fear into hope, from darkness into light, and invites you to join them on their journey.
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