Aleister Black says coming back to WWE under Triple H and Nick Khan leadership felt like coming home.
Black made his return on WWE SmackDown after WrestleMania 41, following nearly four years away from the promotion. He had left the company in 2021 and worked for AEW as Malakai Black from July 2021 to late 2024.
In an interview with the Atomic Drop newsletter, Aleister Black said his return felt natural. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot and I feel like it happened very organically. I think the first day that I came back, like physically being backstage, you know, walking around and talking to people and being quote-unquote reintroduced to the company and stuff like that. It’s strange, right? Because it’s like a mixed feeling of nostalgia and familiarity whilst there is something unknown, because obviously as much as the setup is the same, internally, its guts have been like rearranged if that makes sense, because it’s no longer the same people in charge, but at the same time, it’s the same people that I connected with the first time around.”
“And I remember being very nervous, but then realizing that everything felt the same in the most positive sense and then I was like, why are you so nervous? You know all these people. And then at that point, it was really strange. It was like all my anxiety just kind of dropped. And I’m like, yeah, this time around, it’s even better, you know what I mean? Because I’ve always had a good relationship with Triple H, and I get along great with Nick Khan, and the locker room is something that I’ve always preached about, how fantastic the boys are in WWE.”
Aleister Black says WWE return felt like coming home
Aleister Black described his return to WWE as an incredibly positive and comforting experience, comparing it to a true sense of coming home. “And it just really felt good, it felt like coming home, and I know that sounds somewhat cliché, but I’ve never experienced that feeling of coming home in that sense, and I think that was the first time I could ever say it felt like coming home and everything made sense again. I was in that system for eight years and it is a completely different system than anything else. Nothing is like WWE, no locker room I’ve ever been in, and it just felt like this is what it’s supposed to be for me, you know?”
“I was really excited to be back, of course, and like I said initially, it’s a little bit anxiety-driven. But then once you walk around and you get a feel of everything, you’ll say to yourself, hey man, you know all these people, you know all this and everybody’s just going around doing what they always do and everything is just right, it works, everything runs so smoothly. Then, we get ready for the show, and here we go, rock and roll, everybody’s heading in the same direction and that’s just a really good feeling.” [H/T: 411mania]
Since his return, Black has wrestled four WWE matches. His latest was a Money in the Bank qualifier triple threat against Shinsuke Nakamura and LA Knight. However, he suffered a loss when he hit Nakamura with a Black Mass kick, but Knight threw Black out of the ring and pinned Nakamura to win.
