Aleister Black Says The Idea To Work With His Wife Zelina Vega Was Pitched In 2021
On the October 10th episode of WWE SmackDown, Zelina Vega helped her husband Aleister Black defeat Damian Priest in a Last Man Standing match.
Black and Vega married in 2018, but had never worked together on-screen.
Speaking to Rick Ucchino of Sports Illustrated, Black revealed that the idea to work together dated back to 2021.
“We started shooting little vignettes for it, and we started creating outfits for it,” he said. “That first mask that I ever wore when I worked with [AEW] was actually one of the masks that was utilized. If you remember the Dark Father character that was at the end of my initial run [with WWE], that would eventually see my wife joining me… that was one of the pitches.”
Black was released by WWE in June 2021 and joined AEW a month later. He departed AEW in February 2025, returning to WWE.
“When I got back, the conversation arose again and initially [Triple H] was not really into it. But I think that with the success of AJ [Lee] and CM Punk, and Seth and Becky, I think that he kinda went like, you know what, this might actually really, really work,” he said. “He was completely sold on it and he really liked it. And then it kind of started building from there [during] those last two, three weeks. Where we’re now looking at the presentation that you saw last week, and slowly but surely we’re adding elements. This is a work in progress.”
Black and Vega have done a series of vignettes on SmackDown since their alignment.
