Cameron HawkinsUncrownedWed, November 26, 2025 at 10:38 PM UTC·11 min readFrom that first guitar note in 2017 — the only sound in a hushed, darkened area — followed by beat drop and the Frankenstein-esque inclined rise to the view of the audience, Aleister Black was off to the races in NXT. He was WWE’s latest dark warrior, muted and malicious with no defined moral alignment, taking on all comers with his unique blend of grappling and martial arts. He quickly impressed audiences with not only his action, but inaction, finding strategic moments to meditate mid-match, throwing off whatever game plan his opponents had cobbled together to counter his unusual style. In just over two years, he not only won the NXT Title, but competed for gold at WrestleMania, a rare feat for someone so new to WWE. But almost as quickly as he ascended, he found himself out of the company in 2021.
Now, with a renewed focus, new ideas and new goals, Black is looking to make his second stint with WWE one that answers the questions he’s been meticulously manufacturing all this time.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementEverything seemed to be going Black’s way early on. He racked up victory after victory in NXT via his “Black Mass” roundhouse kick, sweeping NXT’s 2017 year-end awards by winning Male Competitor of the Year, Breakout Star of the Year and Feud of the Year. Black carried that momentum into the next year, winning the NXT Championship from Andrade at 2018's NXT Takeover. Decades after guys like Ken Shamrock and Steve Blackman developed serious, hard-hitting styles that honored their martial arts backgrounds, Black was reviving the dedicated striking aspects of professional wrestling.
But his focus was always to make his style still fit with opponents who may not have the same training, so it all flows together to make great matchups. “I have approached wrestling in such a different lens, that of the martial artist, but even so more of the mathematical martial artist," Black tells Uncrowned, "where I go very deep in what I would change on my footwork and add into my footwork in a way that I don't make it difficult for my opponent to follow what I'm doing."
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHe feuded with the likes of Johnny Gargano and Tomosso Ciampa throughout the rest of the year, then teamed with Ricochet to win the Dusty Rhodes Classic in 2019. He capped off his two-year hot streak by competing for the SmackDown Tag Team Championship at WrestleMania 35, where he and Ricochet came up short in a Fatal 4-Way match. But his second singles stint on WWE's main roster became less focused, with Black switching brands, alignments and alliances until his release in 2021.
Yet in the months prior, he appeared to be hitting his stride once more, becoming the dark despot focused on corrupting those around him. Fueled by an attack that forced him to wear an eye-patch, Black literally and figuratively started to see things differently. “When [the attack] initially happened, and that satirical look and wanting to corrupt everybody else came to the foreground, I had a really established package waiting to show the world," he says.
"Obviously, that never came to fruition, in that sense.”
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementBlack began a feud with Kevin Owens shortly thereafter, only to be soundly defeated in three straight matches. After a lengthy hiatus, following a program with Big E, he was released from WWE.
Considering all the variance during his time on the main roster, there was a silver lining. The direction his character was headed would continue over into AEW, so fans interested in Black’s arc would still get to see it play out. “I had that platform over there where I could do it," he says. "But it's the same reason why the [injured] eye went with me, because I feel like it's a continuation of what's already established. I feel that if I start punching holes in what I do, then I'm cheating myself.
"But more importantly, I'm cheating the fans.”
That continuity — and that attention to detail — are aspects of cultivating a persona that Aleister Black takes to heart. In the land of the supernatural, from the phantasmic phenomenon that is The Undertaker to the grindhouse gore that makes up the Wyatt Sicks, Black is quick to point out that he’s not trying to make magic. Whether he’s a cryptic leader of men or a nomad spreading a dark doctrine, what he’s presenting is rooted in the real flaws of the real world, causing his opponents to rethink their morals and their constitutions, and any slight of hand he presents isn’t from some otherworldly power.
“I've always said to people, ‘Is that legitimately a supernatural thing, or is Aleister Black wanting you to think and is it all smoke and mirrors?’" he says.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"The things that I talk about, things that I show, are things that I actually have knowledge of and understanding of. It doesn't mean that I disagree or agree with them. That's neither here nor there. … I understand the psychology behind it, and that makes it so effective.”
It's hard to process considering that early success, specifically the mark he left on the NXT brand, but Black was away from WWE for a longer period than his initial run. He cherishes that time in NXT, where Ricochet, Ciampa, Gargano and others were able to build off the familiarity they had from the independent scene, but with all of the bells and whistles afforded under the WWE banner. “We had such a place of comfort with each other," Black says, "and we knew each other from the indies, and we worked together for so long.
"It's a really unique moment in time in professional wrestling where all the guys that I've been traveling with for years and years and years, I'm wrestling on a weekly basis, and then I'm in tag matches with them. And it was like the perfect people running the perfect company with the perfect group of individuals during the perfect time where this would blossom. It's a once-in-a-lifetime conglomeration, and I will defend that till the day I die.”
While his time on the main roster wasn’t smooth, it didn’t sour Black on WWE; if anything, he appreciated the challenge of trying to get a persona he valued so much to translate to a larger audience. “[At that time, there were a] whole lot of voices in a small room that all have to listen to one main voice," he says.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"I think that was the part that was a challenge. I didn't hate it at all. [Trying to replicate what worked in NXT] was just something that I wish sometimes we would work more with.”
Black returned to the WWE fold this past summer on the "SmackDown" after WrestleMania 41, and picked up right where he left off — with an emphatic Black Mass Kick to The Miz.
He entered a new time in WWE, when talents like Bron Breakker and Carmelo Hayes who’d matched his NXT success after his own exit were now main-roster mainstays, and Paul "Triple H" Levesque, who’d overseen his time in NXT, was now in the same role on the main roster. Through music, through attitude and through aesthetic, you can see why Levesque is invested in talents like Black and Rhea Ripley, and Black praises the boss' attention to detail in all aspects of the product. “There is never a moment where he's not involved," Black says. "As soon as the meeting is done and we get our collective text messages to meet at the ring because we've got to do X, Y and Z, he's always there. He's always talking. He's always helping. He's always presenting. He gets in the ring and he shows everybody what he thinks, and he'll take bumps.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"It's a different level of caring, but it's the same level of caring that he had in his own career. It's just translated now differently with us, so everything has a piece of Triple H in there.”
One of the biggest changes during his time away, which has also provided creative inspiration, is the success of Black's real-life wife, WWE superstar Zelina. Employed with WWE since 2017, she mostly operated in a managerial role, even working opposite Black as Andrade’s handler/mouthpiece during their NXT run. But she had most of her in-ring career highlights during his absence, winning both the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship and Women’s United States Championship. She also had one of the loudest, most emotional hometown receptions ever when she challenged Rhea Ripley for the SmackDown Women’s Championship in Puerto Rico at 2023’s WWE Backlash event.
While the two had never been paired together, they'd drawn up plans for years, and suddenly the time presented itself for the two to explore what they could produce as a tandem. “We actually shot test footage back in 2020," says Black. "... Then when I came back [to WWE], the conversation arose relatively quickly.
"I think when AJ [Lee] and [CM] Punk did what they did with Seth [Rollins] and Becky [Lynch], I think [that's when he started going like, ‘OK, you know what? I think that right now would be the perfect opportunity to do it,' because that's when the conversation started shifting.”
Zelina, a huge video game fan and cosplay aficionado, came up with different looks and outfits for the duo over the years in case they were ever truly linked together, and she pulled out her first of likely many darker, broodier looks on the Oct. 10 edition of "SmackDown." Black found himself in a Last Man Standing match with a man who also led a dark gathering or sorts, former World Heavyweight Champion Damien Priest. Zelina stepped in to protect him, providing a distraction long enough for Black to hit Priest in the face with a fireball, followed by a Black Mass Kick to put him down.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementZelina soon began accompanying him to the ring in a similar dark aesthetic, and employing the same mind-bending vernacular Black utilized to cause confusion in his opponents. She even physically interjected herself into confrontations, slapping Cody Rhodes in the face after Black stated his intentions to pursue the Undisputed WWE Championship. So while it took awhile to get going, Zelina as Black’s “Serpent Queen” has been a long time coming. “The nature of our industry is very much like whatever eventually they decide is going to happen," Black says. "And any good performer will just go with the flow and we'll use that and have ideas on it prematurely, and we'll know exactly how to adapt to it.”
It’s rare to get a second chance in WWE, but with success stories like Cody Rhodes, CM Punk and others, reintegrating a talent like Black into the fold may not be so much of a risk. And perhaps the most important part is that Black wants his story, in totality, to be something fans not only appreciate, but want to revisit to see just what they may have missed. He also understands that all the production, callbacks, easter eggs and breadcrumbs are null and void without producing between the bells, so there’s an even greater focus now on making sure his matches remain memorable.
“I hope that I'm remembered as someone who, whether or not you liked what I did, you can appreciate the effort that I put into it and the difference that I tried to make in the evolution of professional wrestling," Black says. "I think that I would [hope] be in the conversation of a consistently great, consistently fierce and violent competitor … when Aleister Black entered the ring, we knew we were going to have a goddamn great match on our hands.”
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