Aleister Black is grateful for the chance he got in WWE, but still isn’t sure why his character didn’t translate on RAW and SmackDown the same way it did in NXT.
Shortly after his departure was officially announced on Wednesday afternoon, Aleister Black hosted a stream on his wife, Thea Trinidad’s Twitch channel. Black expressed his gratitude for his time in WWE, and said he was let go to due “budget cuts.” He said despite what happened, he had always had positive interactions with Vince McMahon and discussed the issues with his character not having the same impact on RAW and SmackDown that it did in NXT.
“I think being on the main roster, in all my conversations I’ve ever had with Vince, he was always very positive. I have a good relationship with Vince. I always told him how I felt, he always respected that about me. And he always praised me on my creativity and my ability to have manners and respect, but still be honest with him about how I felt. You never really truly know why things end they did, but all I can tell you is that from my point of view and the word I was always given was that Vince was always pretty high on me. I did well on television. It was just that we could never really nail down what it is that we wanted Aleister to be on the main roster versus what he was in NXT,” Black explained, “and where that problem lied, I don’t know.”
“You have to realize that when I was under Heyman’s wing, Heyman fought tooth and nail for me but it was always, at the end of the day, when a decision is made, the decision is made,” Black said. “Heyman couldn’t protect everyone and he tried his best, and I tried my best. One of the things I actually did with the room promos, is—I don’t know if you ever noticed—but I didn’t really have a lot of control over those. I was just new on the main roster and I didn’t want to be that guy that complained about everything.”
Despite this, Black explained that one thing he did have control over was certain words in his promo. He also mentioned the idea that Aleister had clairvoyant or precognitive abilities, so he would use his opponent’s ring gear or colors as a subliminal message or hidden ‘Easter Egg’ that hinted at his next move.
“When I wrestled the Singh brothers, I had pink in the background. And I think with Buddy, I had white and goldish light in the background so that would hint at my next opponents. And when I sit in the ring and I said I feel like a caged animal, that was hinting at me and Rowan because he was walking around with that caged animal. So Aleister Black, I tried to have a lot of Easter eggs, you know, into my backstage promos and stuff like that. I wanted to give something that people could unravel, so even in my ring gear, my wrestling gear, what I used to do is, the reason I wear so many jackets is because I would literally take tarot cards and I would lay tarot cards and would pick a deck, I would pick cards from [the deck] and I would put it on my back with how Aleister would feel. I always wanted to have my gear to reflect Aleister’s mood or how Aleister would interpret it,” he explained, “and all the colors were significant for how Aleister felt in that moment.”
“I did all that while having shackles on. All these things that I’d created and made and done when I had shackles on. And so now I don’t have shackles anymore, which I’m really happy, to an extent,” Black stated, “because that’s the blessing in all of this.”
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