Aleister Black reacts to the approaching one-year anniversary of his WWE return.
The former Malakai Black made his second WWE comeback on the April 25, 2025 episode of WWE SmackDown. He took out The Miz with a Black Mass Kick. Black has since defeated the likes of former world champions Damian Priest and Randy Orton in singles action.
During a recent interview with The Sunner’s Rob Pasbani, Aleister Black was asked to reflect on the last year with WWE. The former NXT Championship holder had nothing but praise for his second run with the company.
“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,” he said. “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.”
Aleister Black Reflects On His ‘Dark Father’ Character
While Black said he is pleased with how his first year back in WWE has gone, he noted that he is always looking for ways to improve.
“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,” he said.
Black also said he was glad to carry over the “Dark Father” concept from the end of his first WWE run into his current character, noting that the corrupting persona briefly continued in AEW before evolving further in WWE.
“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.”
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