Aleister Black has fired back at the narrative about his time in AEW.
The former NXT champion was part of the AEW roster for 4 years before his contract expired in February this year, and he returned to WWE. Many fans found his run with the rival promotion to be underwhelming, and there have been many rumors as to why the company did not use him to his full potential.
The 40-year-old addressed some of these speculations during his interview with The Ringer ahead of SummerSlam. He discussed how some have been pushing the narrative that he was only biding his time in AEW until he could return to WWE which is not true:
“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 Doesn’t Make Sense: Aleister Black
Despite making his name as a singles star prior, Aleister Black only had a limited number of singles matches in Tony Khan’s promotion. In the last three years, the former champion had only wrestled 4 singles matches under the AEW banner, and some claimed that the refusal to put over other people was the reason behind this.
The wrestling veteran, however, questioned this belief, saying that he would have been positioned higher on the card if he had that kind of pull with the management:
“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.”
Aleister Black is currently not booked for the SummerSlam PPV and he is yet to be featured in a PLE match since his return to the company in April.