A former AEW Champion has addressed his recent WWE return.
Earlier this year, former Trios and TNT Champions Aleister Black and Miro were released from their AEW contracts. Soon enough, the two stars made their WWE debuts following WrestleMania 41.
Recently, during an interview on The Atomic Drop newsletter ahead of Clash In Paris, Black opened up on his highly anticipated SmackDown return, before heaping praise on the WWE locker room.
“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.
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 Fightful
A part of WWE and NXT, Black left the promotion in 2021 and joined AEW. He remained a part of the Jacksonville-based promotion till 2025, when he jumped back to WWE, and recently claimed in the interview that there is no place like his current promotion.
Hall Of Famer Jim Ross Shared His Honest Thoughts About Malakai Black’s AEW Booking
Before his WWE return earlier this year, Aleister Black had wrestled his last AEW match on Full Gear 2024, before quietly vanishing from the promotion. Last year, ahead of Full Gear 2024, Hall of Famer Jim Ross shared honest thoughts about Malakai Black’s AEW booking.
“You didn’t get enough consistency. He could have been more deeply woven into the story lines over time. He’s one of my favorite characters. He’s a smart guy. He’s a hell of a worker. He can be a babyface or a heel. Wherever he’s going to go, he’s going to make money and he’s going to be an asset to any company that he works for.”
“I talked to him a couple of pay-per-views ago, and he didn’t tell me this, but you could tell he was a little disenchanted. I mean, God Almighty. Think about this. They work a day a week. They wrestle a day a week for AEW, maybe two if they get booked on both the Saturday show and the Wednesday show, but that didn’t happen that much. If it did, you’d be working two days a week. I think his future is always going to be bright. He’s a creative guy.”
In other news: NJPW star Gabe Kidd has challenged this former WWE champion.