Aleister Black on the Biggest Changes in WWE Today, Scrapped WrestleMania Plans, More

Letting a star with the potential of Aleister Black go was one of WWE's bigger fumbles toward the end of the Vince McMahon regime.

The Dutchman was essentially handed over to All Elite Wrestling in the summer of 2021, where he had a solid run up until his departure earlier this year.

Upon his exit, a return to WWE only made sense. Sure enough, he resurfaced on SmackDown in Fort Worth, Texas, days removed from WrestleMania 41 and made an immediate impact by laying out The Miz with his patented Black Mass kick.

Black quickly picked up where he left off and has been allowed to show far more of what he's capable of both as a character and inside the squared circle, unlike during his previous stint with the promotion.

Since June, he's been embroiled in a heated rivalry with Damian Priest, even beating the former world heavyweight champion in a grueling Last Man Standing match in the main event of SmackDown in October.

Although he's fallen short of capturing the United States Championship on two occasions, he's teased eventually setting his sights on the Undisputed WWE Championship, currently held by a familiar foe in Cody Rhodes.

Black sat down with Bleacher Report to discuss finally being paired with wife Zelina Vega on screen, the biggest differences he's noticed in WWE this time around, who he nearly competed against at WrestleMania 41, and more.

His Return Run So Far and Working with Wife Zelina Vega

Black is only seven months into his WWE return run but is already off to a stronger start than he when he originally joined the main roster in 2019.

Turning heel and settling into a storyline with Priest has given him something to sink his teeth into and ensure he's always in the mix.

"It's been absolutely fantastic, I have no complaints," he told B/R. "I think in the beginning, obviously we were looking to see what fits and how we're going to fit things and how things play out, reestablishing what once was with some different twists and some evolutionary traits in regards to the initial character. Eventually, I found my groove with Damian Priest and the second and third iteration of that with my wife."

Vega provided Black with the assist in his Last Man Standing match with Priest. He revealed there were plans to put them together on television as far back as 2020 and even when he returned in April.

After some convincing, Triple H eventually agreed to green-light the idea.

"Back in 2020, a couple of months before I left, we started running the installments of the Dark Father character," he said. "There was an actual plan to align my wife with me initially and we actually shot some test vignettes at one point. It was something that was supposed to happen and obviously I went elsewhere, did what I did there and came back. It was a topic of conversation that was immediately had between writers and Triple H and initially it was 'We'll see.' Then it was, 'I don't think that's a good idea,' and then, 'You know what, no, I think we should do it.' It was at the right time, I guess."

"I think they envisioned something for about three months before it happened," Black added. "They started having the conversation again and some installments were discussed and there was some back-and-forth in regards to what it would look like. The old vignettes were pulled up and both the perspective and the ideas were there. We blended that and the rest is what you saw and I'm extremely happy that we're getting to do that."

How the WWE Creative Process Has Changed Since Last Run

WWE is a drastically different beast under Triple H and TKO than it was under Vince McMahon, specifically from a creative standpoint.

"Coming back, the structure has completely changed," Black said. "It's a very different environment with a lot of similarities because the business will be the business. It's ran very smooth in my opinion, but it's ran differently. Vince had a different vision in regards to all of it, but the structure is still the same, it's just that the ideas and execution are often filtered through a different lens.

"Coming back in the last seven months and immediately being thrown in the mix with some of the biggest babyfaces and working main events including with the current world champion, it's a night-and-day difference [compared to] years before that."

Black noted there was a lot of throwing out ideas in the beginning and that not every pitch of his has gotten used. He highlighted his relationship with Triple H and how The Game has not only been receptive to his pitches but will take them, tweak them and even run with them down the line.

"That process is similar to as it was in NXT," Black said. "Perhaps not as embraced because in NXT, there was a lot more wiggle room for certain things and here it's ran very differently. There's a lot more lens things have to go through, but it's more than it was when Vince was there.

"Hunter [Triple H] has a specific vision, and I think I align a lot with that vision in terms of what I think he wants from me but then also what he gives to me is something I can digest very easily and work with."

How Triple H's WWE Resembles NXT Black-and-Gold Era

Michael Owens/WWE via Getty Images

Triple H first taking the reins of WWE from McMahon in 2022 instantly sparked similarities to the peak of NXT's black-and-gold era years earlier, which also had Triple H at the helm.

The greatest stretch of success Black has had in WWE to date came when he worked under Triple H in NXT, and that intimate creative process has since carried over to the main roster.

"The similarities are that I feel the writers are a lot more involved," Black said. "The writers that they have, which is a mix of a lot of familiar faces and a lot of newer people, functions well, it's a lot of really good back-and-forth and really creative ideas.

"I work a lot with Eric Watts who is one of my writers or Colin Clark, the individual who oversees me and I bounce a bunch of ideas off of. They've given me absolutely fantastic feedback whereas in NXT back in the day, we'd work a lot with the writers in a similar setting. I think that's been brought over from NXT and actually harped up.

"I feel they're much more part of the team now than they were when I was there the first time," he added. "Of course, we worked with writers back then, but there's something about the involvement and freedom we have with the writers in terms of promos and how we want to say things that was very prevalent in NXT that we are able to do now as well. That makes the product look a lot better when we let the wrestlers or the performers or the entertainers really dive into what their characters want to say."

Those early installments of the NXT TakeOver specials were known to feature smaller cards with five to six matches, which gave everyone an ample amount of time and a chance to stand out and steal the show.

Triple H has adopted that "less is more" approach to today's premium live event schedule, and Black is fully in favor of it.

"Having less matches on PLEs especially now that they're a lot more frequent makes a lot more sense," he said. "Even back when I worked in Japan a lot, that was kind of the given, five-six matches a night because it keeps everything a lot more special. The second you go above, in my personal opinion, seven or eight matches, you're going to wear out the crowd a lot.

"We live in an age when attention spans are very limited. Everything is a lot of gratification. The longer you let something go for the sake of having people on the card because you want to put people on the card, that might be at the detriment of the product and the perceived experience by fans."

Why He Prefers Being a Heel and Why He Wears a Colored Contact

Michael Marques/WWE via Getty Images

Black has been both a babyface and a heel multiple times since initially arriving in NXT in 2017, but it should come as little surprise that he simply prefers being in the heel role more.

He's among an elite few who can excel as either one, but as a heel, he's had much more motivation as a character and clearer direction. He spoke about how this version of Black is more "self-destructing" than who he was in AEW and that every character he portrays is how he views society with it being ever-changing.

"I think I enjoy being a heel much more, which is what most people would say," he said. "I enjoy being a babyface, especially during my first run in NXT because I was a different type of babyface. It was much more energy-driven, stoic babyface as far as the actions he would have. This iteration is a lot more verbally driven... It's long-term storytelling. Society is an ever-changing thing in the way people perceive things is an ever-changing thing...

"Back in AEW, the character was much more about, not just winning or losing but I made you do X, Y and Z and I proved I could corrupt you and make you do all these things. I'm happy I was able to grab a big part of that and implement it into this one and stick a whole new layer to it."

During the summer of 2020 when WWE was still filming weekly TV at the Performance Center, Black was attacked by an irate Seth Rollins. That assault on his eye led him to wearing a colored contact not only in the immediate aftermath of the angle but also well into his AEW stint and even when he returned to WWE.

That small detail both adds to his awesome presentation and furthers his character's development.

"It's something I felt gave me a layer to communicate from and a reason to have a cynical layer to this character," he said. "I've always been a big fan of James Bond villains, and James Bond villains always have something supernatural without being supernatural. You look at Jaws, he had metal teeth. You look at Blofeld, he had that weird eye and that scar on his eye. It gave them something unique and something to be feared... They're much more physiological villains and I've always enjoyed that process where there's a means to an end.

"The eye thing not only gave me a lot to talk about but a lot to refer back to. A lot of that had to do with accountability and not wanting to take accountability for the character and blaming everyone else but himself. In reality, he was the one who wanted to help Dominik Mysterio and Rey and paid dearly for it with his eyesight. I felt it was such a significant thing for the character that I felt like I'd be cheating myself if I didn't make it an actual part of the character."

Bringing Back 'Root of All Evil' Entrance Theme Was a Must Upon WWE Return

For as much as the term "aura" is overused in wrestling and just in general these days, Black had it in spades when he debuted in NXT in 2017. His excellent "Root of All Evil" entrance music had a lot to do with that.

When rumors started swirling that he was on his way back to WWE earlier this year, fans agreed that his return wouldn't be complete without his signature song. With it being by CFO$ and WWE having phased out a lot of their themes since 2019, there was zero guarantee he'd be able to use it again.

The music hit on the post-WrestleMania 41 SmackDown and it was almost as if no time had passed.

"It was the only thing that would make sense," Black said. "That's the only thing for the most part that people can cling onto. Over the years, the amount of people that would reference my music because the package was obviously the rising up out of nowhere, the music, the lights, the jackets, aesthetic, the stoic-ness... To take that out of the package would tarnish the package and the memory that fans would have.

"We didn't want to take anything away from it. Even before any conversations were had with what direction we would take, the conversations immediately went to doing this and then this, and both of them had to do with coming out of nowhere, rising up and the music was right back on the table."

Fans long speculated that the creaking noise added to the beginning of his entrance when he would rise up from the darkness was a McMahon call, as it wasn't long into his main roster run.

Black confirmed it was McMahon's doing but admitted to not having a major issue with the change.

"That was definitely a Vince thing," he said. "I think Vince thought the character was a vampire, like old-school Nosferatu in the 1920s. He felt he heard a creak and that's why he wanted to have a creak there. I didn't mind it as much, but I feel like for fans it was a little bit of a discontinuation.

"Change is always difficult for a lot of people to accept and this wasn't the biggest change, but I do understand where fans were coming from because I don't personally think it added a lot. It also negated what I thought the character was."

Nearly Facing Randy Orton at WrestleMania 41

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Cryptic vignettes started to air a few weeks out from WrestleMania 41 indicating a mysterious figure was on their way to SmackDown.

PWTorch reported around the time that Black had received his release from AEW and was contractually free to appear elsewhere, so all signs pointed to him being behind them.

The post-WrestleMania episodes of Raw and SmackDown are usually where wrestlers return or debut because the crowds can be at their hottest and are expecting all sorts of surprises.

It was logical for Black to resurface on the first SmackDown after 'Mania, but at one point, discussions were had about him competing at The Show of Shows itself and that being where he'd have his grand comeback.

His proposed opponent? Randy Orton, who needed to issue an open challenge after his scheduled opponent Kevin Owens went down with a neck injury.

Ultimately, Orton vs. Black didn't happen, and arguably, it was for the best considering The Viper was going over, regardless.

"They were toying with a bunch of ideas," Black said. "I know at one point there was this conversation about, 'Oh, maybe he's coming back to wrestle Randy Orton at 'Mania.' And that was an actual thing that was discussed, but that wasn't an isolated thing... It was more of a list of names. They were like, 'We don't want him to lose coming back at WrestleMania. That doesn't make any sense.'

"At that point, they already made the decision to bring me back and then the Randy Orton thing came up and they were like, 'No, let's keep it [on the post-WrestleMania SmackDown].' They wanted to give it the right attention in order for it to be specifically about me, which I'm really grateful for."

His wife Zelina Vega won the Women's United States Championship on the same SmackDown he returned on, so it was a "unique few days" and a "good memory" for them both, he said.

Wanting to Work with Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins Again

In the seven months Aleister Black has been back in WWE, he's faced plenty of fresh faces including Carmelo Hayes, Damian Priest and Ilja Dragunov.

He's been a weekly fixture on SmackDown and even challenged for the United States Championship twice, but his biggest opportunity came when he went one-on-one with Cody Rhodes in the main-event of the Nov. 7 episode.

Not only is Rhodes the reigning Undisputed WWE champion, they have a rich history as opponents dating back to the second half of 2021 in AEW. Black debuted for the promotion ambushing Rhodes and went on to squash him in his debut match in under five minutes.

There should and will come a point that they rekindle their rivalry for more than a one-off, and it could do wonders as far as elevating Black to that next level.

"There are endless possibilities and the roster is so stacked nowadays," Black told B/R. "There's so much great, new talent there. The NXT talent pool is absolutely filled with very young, exciting wrestlers to keep an eye on and hopefully I get to work with. I'm so blessed to be in this stage of my career where I feel like I'm more seasoned and physically feel and look better than I've ever been.

"Cody Rhodes, there's a reason he's the world champion. Other than John Cena, I don't think I've seen anybody work as hard as he does. He's always on the road, always busy, always on the road, always representing the company. He's someone I look up to very much."

Seth Rollins is another notable name Black should eventually target given The Visionary is responsible for making Black the monster he is today, and they even interacted on the SmackDown back before Money in the Bank.

Rollins is out injured indefinitely, so expect Rhodes to be next up on his hit list once he's settled his score with Priest.

"When I got the chance to wrestle him in a quick little taster is what I'd call it, which is what the idea was," Black said about facing Rhodes. "'Give them something that makes people excited for what could possibly happen down the line.' I think we did, it was a lot of fun.

"It's always a good day when I can wrestle Cody, he's one of the easiest people to work with. He's super professional, has a great mind and knows how to make every opponent unique and let them shine in their respective abilities. That's something, especially with Cody, that I'm absolutely grateful for.

"Moving down the line, that's something I hope we get to replay the whole thing with myself and Seth because there's obviously a lot of storytelling there."

Graham Mirmina, aka Graham "GSM" Matthews, has specialized in sports and entertainment writing since 2010. Visit his website, WrestleRant, and subscribe to his YouTube channel for more wrestling-related content.