Aleister Black was among six superstars released by WWE on Wednesday, June 2.
Black returned to television via vignettes in April that aired on SmackDown after not being on television since October 2020. During his time away from TV, many reports came out about Black that suggested creative had nothing for him or that Black had fallen out of favor with Vince McMahon.
Addressing the reports on Twitch, Black said, "There are a lot of waves in WWE that you don't understand. Don't listen to anyone that says, 'Oh, Vince was never high on Aleister.' That's not true at all. What murdered me was the seven months at home. During those months, there were different reports like 'my NXT request got shutdown.' That's not true. It didn't get shutdown at all, it got praised. The thought was, 'I want to do it this way at first, if it doesn't work, I can always put you back in NXT.' I had a plans for that too. It wasn't shot down hard at all."
Black went on to say that many reports put out are "5% truth and 95% fabricated" and that it's sad that the business has become "a tabloid." Black did say that he believes he was "spared" and that there is "good intent" in most of them.
He also addressed Fightful Select's report that his wife Zelina Vega was at the WWE Performance Center.
Fightful Select published the following report on May 13:
Zelina Vega, also known as Thea Trinidad was at the WWE Performance Center on Thursday, May 13. We were told it wasn't just a visit, as she was being filmed for some reason there. Zelina left WWE in November when she was fired for not following third party policies. Her husband Aleister Black also hasn't wrestled since her firing, and only recently saw vignettes air for his return after Fightful had reports that he had not been backstage at Smackdown for quite a while.
We're working to learn the context of Zelina's appearance at the WWE PC, but have been told the working plan is for her to return to the company.
In an update since this morning, we're told specifically, Zelina was filmed walking into the WWE Performance Center with Simone Johnson, the daughter of The Rock. We weren't told if this is supplemental footage or if there's a plan behind that specifically. We were also informed that Zelina's return has been in the works for a while.
Black commented by saying, "There is the thing of 'validating your stories' as opposed to blatantly putting out stuff that harms people. Take in the fact that a couple of weeks ago, with my wife, that harmed her so much. Nothing but hate comments. All because someone was like, 'sign up to my Patreon, I have news.' There was literally no news. There was nothing.'
Black didn't deny the report or offer specifics on if there was anything incorrect about the report.
Elsewhere during the stream, Black detailed what went wrong with his character on the main roster and discussed his relationship with Vince McMahon. You can find his comments by clicking here.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit the original source with a h/t and link back to Fightful for the transcription.
