Mansoor discusses his journey through Maximum Male Models.
On the July 1, 2022 episode of SmackDown, Mansoor and Mace made their televised debuts as WWE’s Maximum Male Models. Per their creative direction, the duo was tasked with showing off various fashion collections. They worked with their talent agent Max Dupri (aka LA Knight), and the later-appointed Director of Talent Maxxine Dupri.
During a recent interview with WrestleZone Managing Editor Bill Pritchard, Mansoor looked back on the process of transitioning into Maximum Male Models. There, he revealed that it was a vision derived from the mind of Vince McMahon.
A nebulous concept
“The Maximum Male Model idea was actually more of a nebulous concept before anybody was even in mind for the role,” Mansoor said. “Vince McMahon had had an idea for the male models, from what I hear, for a year before we debuted. He would always be in creative meetings and be telling writers and producers, ‘Damn it, let’s get some male models on the show. I want to see some. I want to see people walking the runway.’”
Mansoor says they agreed, but weren’t sure who to put in that role when it was time for the debut. Mansoor says he was lucky (or unlucky) enough to get one of those roles.
“Me and Mace had been best friends since the day I walked into the PC. Our pairing had absolutely nothing to do with that. I remember telling Vince, ‘Oh, me and Mace like, we’re this [close]. This is going to be great because we have such great chemistry.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, I had no idea.’ So [it was a] total coincidence. I was happy to do it. I wanted to do it because I felt that the perception of me. And not just by the fans, but also in the company. [They thought] I was kind of a one-dimensional character in the sense that people knew me as a Saudi representative. I’d come out at these shows, I’d have a match, I’d win. Then I would disappear for a few months.”
An Opportunity To Entertain
Given that his prior creative booking had been met with an inconsistent direction, Mansoor approached this opportunity with Maximum Male Models with much excitement.
“I knew that if I was given the ability and the opportunity to perform as an outrageous, crazy character, I would show that I could take anything and make it entertaining,” Mansoor said. “I could take any gimmick or idea or storyline they have, and put everything and anything I have in my heart and my mind to it. It was going to be great.”
“Sadly, there were some outside factors that kind of mucked up the whole thing,” Mansoor noted. “I won’t really get into that. Still, it was a lot of fun. More than anything, the house shows were phenomenal. We weren’t even really on TV and we would come out and people would just instantly hate us. So we got instant heat. We got to work long matches with great workers like Chad Gable, Otis, The New Day and learn a lot. So it was a positive experience overall.”
Making It Maximum
While outside factors eventually diverted the path of the Maximum Male Models, Mansoor still holds many positive memories of the experience. One of his most enjoyable takeaways was the creation of a digital series called Making It Maximum.
“I was super happy to do that YouTube series that we did, Making It Maximum. Because that was totally fully written, produced, directed by us,” Mansoor said. “We had Andrew Carr, who’s a production guy in WWE, he got the equipment and he put the whole thing together. He edited it and basically put it all together so it could be put up on YouTube because we were doing that week to week. I remember going to work. We wouldn’t be doing anything on TV. But writers and producers and other wrestlers would come up to us and say, ‘Holy sh**, we love the YouTube show. You guys are hysterical.'”
“I think that actually helped us a little bit. Once we got restarted with the Otis storyline, which also petered out for reasons beyond our control, we were doing segments backstage and for online and even on the show where the writers would say, ‘Hey, you guys come up with something. You can improvise. We trust you guys.’ When I got released [from WWE], I actually feel like I got a lot more support and help. People saw me in that role and knew that I could do something other than just be a generic white-meat babyface.”
Watch our full interview with Mansoor below:
