Malakai Black on His WWE Return Being A “Dud” Year That Was Nothing Close To “Mountains” Of Promises Made & Match With Randy Orton Was Pitched For WrestleMania 42

As noted before, Aleister Black, also known as Malakai Black in the indies and formerly in AEW, was released from WWE this past April as part of a larger batch of releases and departures.

A recent episode of the ZELVX and CHARLIE GIRL podcast featured Black as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Black’s thoughts about his return to WWE in 2025 turning out to be a “dud year” for his wrestling career and being nothing close to the promises that were made to him to return to the company.

“When I got released, the first person on the phone to send me a message that really hit me on a deep level was Damo. Damo said some words to me that really drove home. It really pulled me out of a really bad spot that I was mentally. I can pretend that it didn’t suck, but of course it sucks. It always sucks. In my case, it sucked harder because of the mountains of things that were promised in all the other conversations, and then being presented with this fucking dud of a year. Despite main events and all these things, it was just wasn’t anything that they said they wanted to do. To me, it was like, why did you guys even want this? Because this made no fucking sense.”

Black also gave his thoughts about how WWE originally had pitched plans for him to have a match against Randy Orton at WrestleMania 42 and the smoking jacket he wore at a recent PROGRESS Wrestling event was originally an idea for that WrestleMania match.

“I was able to debut my smoking jacket, which is a funny story because four months before WrestleMania, this is not a knock on Seth because Seth had no idea, but I started talking to Jason (Baker), and I said, ‘I have this smoke device, and I want to put it under my cloak, and during our entrance, she would have the remote and when I roll in and sit, she would press the button and smoke would come out of my jacket. Initially, the plan was for WrestleMania because up until that point, the pitch for me and Randy Orton was WrestleMania. Obviously, that never saw the light of day, but I didn’t want to dump the jacket.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com 1 & 2