After watching his 90-day non-compete clause with WWE officially come to an end just before Christmas, Mansoor is thinking about the next step in his professional wrestling career, be that to go on a year-long tour of the indies or by finding a new home with another big promotion, be that AEW, Impact/TNA, or even New Japan Pro Wrestling.

Which path will he take? Only time will tell, but in an interview with Denise Salcedo for Instinct Culture, Mansoor put over AEW in a major way, celebrating both the company and Tony Khan for helping to give plenty of his former friends a chance to keep their professional wrestling careers alive.

“I love AEW. Primarily because I have a lot of really close friends who, for whatever reason, don't work for WWE anymore, and their families are fed and taken care of because of AEW and Tony Khan and their team. So for that, I'll always be eternally grateful, especially for the people who got let go during the pandemic,” Mansoor said via Wrestling Inc.

“There are people who would've been deported. I mean, there are people who would've had to leave America if not for the fact that they got a work visa, in some cases [from] AEW, in some cases [from] Impact. So for that reason, I mean, I will always be gratuitous that those options exist and that AEW exists as that sort of alternative because it's so incredibly important.”

Asked about his goals in pro wrestling now that he's allowed to work where he'd like as whatever character he'd like, Mansoor let it be known that he's ready to finally prove he can go regardless of which company he works for, as he was seldom allowed to showcase his abilities in WWE.

“I always kind of felt like, and I hate talking about myself in this way, but I do really feel like this run, on the indies, and wherever that takes me around the world, is going to be so instrumental in sort of creating a perception of me that I feel is more accurate to who I am. I feel like I haven't had a performance that I can really, really, really be proud of in the ring since that Mustafa Ali match. And before that, it was Cesaro,” Mansoor said.

“It was so few and far between, but now I feel like ‘I'm going to go to every single town and every single country, and I'm going to shock people. I'm going to have Match of the Night everywhere I go.' And people are going to laugh. They're going to say ‘Mansoor? Yeah right.' But you're going to be surprised, I promised. You're going to be super surprised. I am going out there like a man with a mission, 100%. And I hope I get to do that in AEW and Impact/TNA, all these companies that will have me, because I want to show as many people as possible what they're missing.”

Where will Mansoor land? Will he be able to prove himself one of the best in-ring performers of this generation and land a major deal with a promotion like AEW or Impact? Only time will tell, but considering he's been adding dates to his tour list like wildfire over the past few months, he will certainly have a number of opportunities to do so in front of crowds that could make or break his wrestling career.

Mansoor explains how pitching ideas worked in WWE.

Elsewhere in his conversation with Denise Salcedo, Mansoor discussed his creative output in WWE and how, despite being left off television for most of his career with the promotion, he was constantly pitching new ideas for his character.

“It was a little bit different for both, but I was pitching ideas constantly,” Mansoor shared via 411 Mania. “I mean, almost every week if I wasn't on TV, I was sending — and everyone in WWE, when you're a wrestler, you're assigned a writer, who is on the creative team, and that writer is essentially your liaison, sort of your point of contact with creative. You'll send them the ideas; sometimes you'll send the whole team the ideas, but primarily, they're the ones introducing your ideas to the room … I would say the vast majority of writers were very kind to me and very professional with me.”

Did Mansoor come up with the idea for the Maximum Male Models? No, that feels like a Vince McMahon idea all day, but hey, at least he was trying his best to keep his career going with new ideas of his own, even if they weren't always used. Suddenly free to do whatever he likes, Mansoor will be able to do whatever he wants moving forward, and he'll actually get to see how they go over with the crowd.