Aleister Black Considers His First Year Back In WWE ‘A Massive Success’

Aleister Black made his return to WWE on the April 25, 2025 episode of WWE SmackDown after weeks of vignettes.

Black was previously with WWE from 2016 to 2021 before joining AEW following his WWE release. In his first year back in WWE, he had a notable feud with Damian Priest and aligned on-screen with his wife Zelina Vega.

Speaking to Rob Pasbani of The Stunner, Black was asked what he thought of his first year back in WWE.

“First and foremost, I consider it a massive success. A lot more work, a lot more things that I have done inside the ring and outside the ring. I like being busy; once I feel like I am not busy, I feel like I am not doing something right. The amount of work I have had within WWE has been a lot, which is good. Several main events, headlining several Smackdown episodes, merchandise sales, commercials, various interviews, and then obviously as of recently, working the main event with Randy Orton and beating him. I cannot really complain when it comes to that.

Can we do better? We can always do better. Even if I would have been at the highest of highest of echelons, I would still find things of myself that I would be like, ‘I can improve on this or I can improve on that.’ So, I consider it to be a very good year, very fruitful, very exciting, and very diverse. A lot of changes, a lot of new things. I was happy that I was able to bring over something that I was working on at the end of my first run when we did the Dark Father. This whole corrupting people character that was going to start with the Dark Father and obviously had its life in AEW for a minute, bringing that over to WWE, I feel like it has a lot more legs. With Randy, it has not even seeded as much as it is going to, which is a really cool prospect for me. I should be very happy and excited to be doing what I am doing. It feels very good.”

Elsewhere during the interview, Black clarified that tattoos did not keep him from participating in the Royal Rumble. You can find his full comments here.