Aleister Black Addresses Narrative That He Didn’t Want To Be In AEW Or Didn’t Want To Be Pinned

Aleister Black returned to WWE in April after spending four years in AEW.

During his AEW tenure, Black was most often used in trios matches alongside Buddy Matthews and Brody King in the House of Black. Black would be off television for stretches, and in August 2022, revealed he was previously dealing with a back injury, but was past it. Fans often pointed to injuries as to why Black was off television.

Speaking on the Ringer Wrestling Show, Black addressed the narrative that he was injured during his AEW tenure and that’s why he wasn’t utilized as much.

“There was a time where I was working with WWE where I had a back injury. The back injury kind of came and left, came and left. Then, there was a time around the time when I was in AEW that I wasn’t utilized as much. There was nothing really going on, that’s just the way it was booked. I don’t control that. I made this post about me doing deadlifts. I was wearing really funny shoes, they were lifting shoes, but they looked like church shoes. Someone is making jokes about it. It was a post about me finally being able to deadlift again. This was a post where I talked about, ‘I had this back injury three months ago. We finally got the vertebrae right back again, so I can finally deadlift.’ I made that post and within months, weeks, days, maybe, everyone is like, ‘Aleister Black back injury. This is why he’s not being utilized.’ I was like, ‘Guys, this is about me not having a back injury.’ This post was literally three months after the back injury was done.

“To this day, that narrative about, ‘his injuries,’ I’m not really that injured. Number one, Tony (Khan) was very adamant about us being in six-mans, which is fine, it’s his company. If he wants me to wear a clown suit, then that’s what we’ll do. I think people really like to run with the narrative and I don’t know why. I think it’s partially, ‘this is not the role we want him to be in, so we’re going to give a narrative that makes us have an understanding as to why he’s not being put in singles competition.’ Also, something, I had a knee injury at one point and missed one week of taping. That became, ‘Oh, he always had back injuries, he always has knee injuries.’ I’m absolutely fine. There is nothing going on. Yeah, I had a back injury at one point. If it had continued, at one point, I was afraid it would get really bad and would take me out. Luckily, it didn’t. It was manageable, we rehabbed it, and everything was fine. For some reason, to this day, people still run with that narrative because I wasn’t on TV as much. That is literally because we weren’t utilized that way. That’s just what it was. There was no grand scheme or grand agenda. No conspiracy. It’s just the way we were used and that’s it.”

Fans also chattered that Black wasn’t happy in AEW, that he was just coasting until he could return to WWE, and that he didn’t want to be pinned.

Black addressed those narratives, stating, “If you look at the pay-per-view matches that we did, we always knocked it out of the park. When we had these six-man matches, it was against local talent. Nothing against local talent, but the object was, ‘We want you guys to run through these guys.’ Cool. If you have five and five on TV as a segment, there are six people in that match, let’s say we have a higher profile six-man tag, everybody wants to get something in and at one point, especially with me and Buddy, we kind of took a backseat so we could get Brody in front of the spotlight because people didn’t know Brody that well. We let him take the reins in these things. It becomes this thing where people want to desperately have a narrative. ‘He never wanted to be in AEW.’ That’s completely false. That’s absolutely not true. I had a great time in AEW. I had a lot of fun. Did I do everything that I wanted to do? No, but that’s okay. At the end of the day, that’s not my company and I don’t have any say.

“It’s the same way, ‘He didn’t want to lay down for people.’ If you really think that I have so much pull in the company that I can say who I’m not going up against or lay down against, you think I’m not going to vouch for myself or put myself in the main events? You think I’m going to politic, ‘I’m not going to lay down for this person.’ It doesn’t make sense. Now, I know how that came to life. It’s not something I’m not going to speak on because it’s part of a grander thing in wrestling that affects more people. Because I know what it is now, and who it was, I’m just going, ‘Well, that’s a shame.’ I don’t like that, for a big part, has been a running narrative because I’ve always loved wrestling and I still love wrestling, and I loved being in AEW. My match with Adam Copeland was one of the funnest things I’ve done in wrestling. At the end of it, I made a calculated business decision and I looked at what I wanted to do, where I wanted to do it, and how I wanted to do it. This is where my wife [Zelina Vega] was. Listening to option A and what they wanted, option B and what they wanted, and I picked the one that, business-wise, made sense for me. I feel I had a lot left to do here and on this side, what they wanted me to do, that didn’t completely align with what I want to do, so I’m going to go the other route.”

Black returned to WWE on the WWE SmackDown following WrestleMania 41.

He is set to face Damian Priest on Friday’s SmackDown.

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