On September 21, Mace (ma.cé) and Mansoor (mån.sôör) were among multiple releases made by WWE.
Mace and Mansoor were paired as Maximum Male Models, but had not been on television for months.
On Twitch, Mace and Mansoor discussed their release and how things came to an end.
Mace: You were fired first, right?
Mansoor: Which made me think that you maybe had a shot. I didn't think we would be right next to each other.
Mace: When everybody messaged us, they messaged us together, as we share one brain cell. We figured they would call us both at the same time. My firing story is, I was driving my beautiful daughter to school. We were going through a dead zone. There is a dead zone between my house and her school. I didn't get anything. You had informed me that you were fired. I thought I was safe. I had driven through a dead zone, apparently, I should have stayed because when I left the dead zone after dropping off my daughter, I had received a text that said, 'Call me back.' I called back and it starts off with small talk. I have Twitter. I know why you're calling. You're not calling to say hello. That was it. Unexpected? In, maybe not today.
Mansoor: Unexpected in the sense that, I won't get into it...it sounds egotistical. I personally felt like there was a lot of untapped potential. After the time we stopped traveling, when we were banned from TV. Not going to get into that, that's for my book. Right after the time we stopped traveling, we put together these....we flew to Stamford to meet with the creative team of Raw and we presented two pitch videos.
Mansoor: I was asleep when they called me. I got a voicemail. It freaked me out, it was a Chicago number.
Mace: I thought it was Punk [laughs]
Mansoor: My close personal friend CM Punk. No, it was head of talent relations. They left me voicemail saying 'Call me back when you can.' Why? Maybe they'll forget to fire me. I did contract the Coronavirus. My family got the Coronavirus. My little boy Dingo didn't get it. I get a text saying, 'call me back.' Why delay the inevitable. He was a nice guy. I have not heat with him.
Mace: Who do we have heat with?
Mansoor: LA Knight. Should we shoot on LA Knight? Mr. big star getting his hand raised by John Cena. Mr. most over man in the company. Fair play. You really made it work. You did it. [Sarcasm]
Mace: Yes, congratulations. We started in the same place and we clearly went the wrong direction. The L is on us. [Sarcasm]
Mansoor: There is no heat with LA Knight. He was going to get fired. He was this close to getting let go because, for whatever reason, Vince hated his Max Dupri performance.
Mace: He wanted him to be softer.
Mansoor: Like a scummy agent. It was never the right role for him. I was always saying 'let me be Max Dupri.' I begged them. 'Let me talk, let me be someone's manager.' I can talk, nobody knows that I can talk. It's just not how it worked. No heat with him. He took the best of a really bad situation, strapped himself onto his own rocket, and shot up when nobody was helping him.
Mace: You know who we do have heat with? Maxxine Dupri. We made her. We molded her. We figured this was our chance. When we were saddled with Maxxine Dupri, we were like, 'look at this unrefined lump of coal that we can mold and put pressure on and turn into a brand new era of the divas division.' We wanted a diamond cutter.
Mansoor: We taught her everything she knew. I know for a fact that she was in the room when we got fired. They asked her, 'Mace and Mansoor, they worth keeping around?' [Sarcasm]
Mace: 'No, I'm done with them.'
Mansoor: We're her Test and Albert. She's Trish.
Mace: We knew. We said it for ages, before we even broke up.
Mansoor: We told her, 'You're going to be Trish. We're Test and Albert.' No, we don't have heat with Maxxine Dupri. She's a sweetheart.
The duo showed their first pitch, which was the Fixers where they would be heavies for another talent and "fix" any issue through threats. One person in the chat commented they could take the act to IMPACT.
Mace: If I could only be in Main Event Mafia.
Mansoor: I would love to be in Paparazzi Productions.
Mace: We might have a chance. What if Kevin Nash remakes Paparazzi Productions with us to stick it to LA Knight.
Mansoor: People liked the Fixers idea. One of the directions people thought it could go is we could be Miz' new stable. I thought that would have been great. Miz is awesome. He's always been great to us. I showed him the video and he said it was great stuff. Everyone seemed to like it. It just didn't pan out for some reason. We weren't going to stop sending ideas.
The next video they played was for The Answer, which was a pyramid scheme for a cult. After discussing the idea, which included an in-character podcast, pamphlets, and more, they went back to Maximum Male Models.
Mansoor: One of the ideas we had in Maximum Male Models. This almost happened, not this angle, but we did almost work with Cody Rhodes. I wanted him to hit me with the Cross Rhodes and it would break my nose. Then, I could do Undashing. I wanted to wear the mask like him and do the angle where I thought I was the ugliest person in the world and a horribly disfigured mutant. Everyone kept saying, 'we want Male Models to have more edge. We need more aggressive and vicious. What can we do?' I kept saying, 'Break my nose. I'm this vicious goblin.'
Mansoor: Everything happened in the company where Vince left, Hunter took over. That was like three weeks after we debuted. I don't know if there has ever been worse timing. When we were approached to do Maximum Male Models. I'm not going to give the whole story, saving it for my book. It was given to us like, 'Here is the golden goose. If you guys grab the reigns on this and commit to it, you're going to be rich for a very long time because this is Vince's baby. He has wanted to do a male model act for eight months. He wanted this so bad.' Every week, we were supposed to do a new fashion show. We would go to the mall and buy the clothes. It was on us to buy the clothes. They gave us $2,000 to buy stuff. The rehearsal for the first fashion show was surreal. People were made to leave for us. For thirty minutes we rehearsed.
Mace: It was Money in the Bank. They were like, 'get the ladders out of the way. We have to rehearse the fashion show.' Vince McMahon came out and showed me how to turn, and to change my white pants because he hates white pants.
Mansoor: It's very rare for Vince to come out in rehearsals. He stays in his office. He came out for this. 'Is this our ticket to superstardom?'
They said that they modeled at house shows because Vince wanted them to get more reps. They were never attacked, which angered the crowd. They would also do a five-minute pose.
Mansoor: The plan was, Maxxine was going to entice Otis to join us. We were going to have Otis as a Maximum Male Model while Chad Gable is like, 'they're just using you Otis, I'm your real friend.' The idea was, one day, it was Otis' big debut as a Maximum Male Model. He was finally going to graduate and come out for a fashion show. Right before he comes out, Chad was going to go, 'they're setting you up for a trap.' Otis is like, 'You don't want me to be happy.' He comes out, strikes a pose on the platform, and we dump slime on him. We had been begging writers to bring back slime. Chad was going to come out, we kick his ass, Otis makes the save, it leads to a match.
Mace: We thought, 'If we can do this, we're set. We can do ComicCons for the rest of our lives.'
Mansoor: Sadly, the week after we did the segment where we took pictures of Otis, we were supposed to do a match with the Good Brothers, it got cut and pushed back. We get pulled into a person of high rankings office...I'm not going to say what he said. I'll save it for my book. We were essentially told we were going to have to revamp the Maximum Male Model and adjust, and until then, we would be off TV. We would get cut from being in the background of segments. It all came to a head when we were in the Andre Battle Royal. Producer Jason Jordan comes up with the spot where we get eliminated by Otis and Chad, Maxxine is celebrating, we question her. 'Great, our story is going to continue.' No, we were not supposed to be in that match. When that spot aired, the person in the office who told us we weren't supposed to be on TV stood up and said, 'Who the hell let the models on?' It happened again because we were in the battle royal for the IC Title shot. We do a spot with Dexter Lumis and Johnny Gargano. The same thing happened. 'Who let the models be in the match again?' Once that happened, we stopped traveling, it was over. Then came the process of pitching stuff because we were told we would be repackaged. Obviously, that didn't happen.
Mace: We've done a lot of cool things. Unfortunately, the way that the system works, it's crap shoot. Sometimes you're up, sometimes your down, and there's nothing you can do. We can do as many pitches and ideas, but if we're not in the building, we can't get used and we can't prove that we're asset and we get let go. I hated the fact that I was ignoring every post that was wrestling related. Everything made me feel sick. Every time I saw wrestling, it stabbed me. The fact that something I love made me feel that way was awful. On the other side of it, we get to do some cool stuff, I get to learn to love it again. We can go everywhere now. We think very little of ourselves because of the run we had, but when we go out, people recognize us. I'm excited for the future.
Mansoor: I didn't want to complain too much because the run that I had, I paid off my mortgage, there's a roof over my families head, which I'll always be thankful. I got checks from those Saudi shows that, I never thought I would see that amount of money in my life. I'll never have a bad word to say. I will say this; watching wrestling from home is one of the worst feelings in the world. Imagine you have a dream job, you get that dream job, but while you're working there, you're not allowed to do it. It really feels like you're trapped under ice and you're banging the top trying to get up. I literally felt like watching other people do what I wanted to do, was like watching my wife get fucked. The worst part is, not even that well. I could be doing it better. No offense to the cucks in the chat.
Maximum Male Models, headed by LA Knight (Max Dupri) formed in the summer of 2022. The duo, who were aligned with Maxxine Dupree, were regulars on WWE Raw until she joined Alpha Academy (Chad Gable & Otis) in May 2023.
Fightful will provide more information on her release when it is known. Fans can find all releases made by WWE on September 21 by clicking here.
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