Malakai Black recently said the hardest part of his WWE exit wasn’t losing the job itself, but feeling like the creative plans he’d been told about never came to fruition. Eric Bischoff isn’t convinced that’s really what happened.
On the 83 Weeks podcast, Bischoff said he’s had pleasant, respectful interactions with Black personally, but admitted he struggles to believe WWE explicitly promised everything Black now describes.
I don’t know Aleister Black. Well, I’ve had a couple conversations with him. Always found him to be a very pleasant, respectful gentleman and an interesting person, my impression of him, the short conversations I’ve had with him. That being said, I find it hard to believe.
He allowed that some kind of miscommunication is plausible, suggesting creative conversations happen constantly in wrestling and it’s entirely possible ideas discussed informally got interpreted as firm commitments.
From there, Bischoff pivoted to a broader point about how frustration can reshape someone’s memory of events. Without claiming to know exactly what Black is going through, he described his own experience with career uncertainty and how nerves can gradually curdle into resentment toward others.
He suggested Black may be constructing a version of events that makes his situation easier to live with rather than confronting the possibility that three separate WWE stints simply didn’t work out as hoped, and questioned whether that reflects something Black needs to look at within himself rather than blame the company for.
Especially when you’re frustrated or, in this case, maybe concerned about how you’re going to make a living because, let’s be honest, there’s not a lot of places for a character like Aleister Black to work that’s going to satisfy him, right? He’s not 20 years old on the indie scene.
So, at some point that reality starts to make you pretty nervous and sometimes nerves turn into fear and fear turns into anger and anger turns into bitterness and before you know it, these people lied to me.
Bischoff also raised a practical concern: going public with criticism like this probably doesn’t help Black’s case if he ever wants another opportunity, arguing that a company unlikely to see fresh value in bringing back a character it’s already tried multiple times isn’t going to be swayed by public complaints.
