Dean Muhtadi, formerly known as Mojo Rawley, is pulling back the curtain on his frustrating decade-long run with WWE—and he’s not sugarcoating any of it.
During an appearance on The Rule Breakers Podcast, the former Superstar explained how spending 10 years under contract didn’t amount to much more than false hope, brief matches, and missed opportunities. Muhtadi made it clear that he didn’t walk away from WWE by choice. In fact, he stuck around believing his shot would eventually come.
“I didn’t want to leave at the time. Later on, I realized that it was a blessing and a total gift that all this happened.”
But after a decade of waiting for a real push, the realization hit hard.
“I was there for 10 years. I thought I could have done so much more—which probably everyone on the roster thinks, right? But you go back and look at it and it’s like, ‘Oh, well, I never really had a storyline. I never really got into a mic battle. I never got to have a pay-per-view program. I never got to have a match with someone where I knew what I was going to be doing or who I was going to be working with more than like four hours in advance.’”
Even when matches were penciled in ahead of time, they rarely went anywhere.
“Even if they were like, ‘Oh, Mojo’s wrestling this person next week,’ how many times did that actually happen? And was it a 20-minute match? Or a 30-second match? We can’t do anything with this.”
He pointed to his house show run with Apollo Crews as an example of what could have been—but never was.
“Apollo and I—I remember we did an entire international tour together. We had awesome matches. Some of the better matches I ever had. But then you get to TV and it’s like, ‘Go hit your rear view and your whoopee cushion’ and get out in 30 seconds.”
Through it all, Muhtadi kept hoping his moment would come.
“I just wanted to get to the point where I could go out there and fail or try things—bet on myself. And I felt like it never came.”
“But at the end of the day, too, it was like, ‘All right, I’ve gotten 10 years here, I love this. I’ve wanted to do this since I was a kid. I’m still here. My time will come eventually… hopefully.’”
He even recalled advice from Fandango that stuck with him.
“I remember Fandango telling me that one time—it isn’t about getting that immediate push. It’s about being here the longest. Everyone’s going to get their due at some point.”
Unfortunately, Muhtadi’s chance never arrived—because long COVID forced him to the sidelines for good.
“But, you know, unfortunately COVID happened. And I feel like I never got to that point.”
Dean Muhtadi’s story is the harsh reality of what many wrestlers go through—working for years with no storyline, no mic time, no clear path—just waiting for a shot that might never come.
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