Summary

Aleister Black said he views his first year back in WWE as a major success after returning in 2025.

He pointed to a heavy workload that included multiple main events, SmackDown headliners, merchandise sales, commercials, interviews, and a recent main-event win over Randy Orton.

Black also said he feels his current character direction has room to grow, noting that ideas tied to his earlier Dark Father concept have translated to his current run.

Aleister Black and Randy Orton feud momentum strengthens his WWE return narrative

Aleister Black saying the Randy Orton program still has more depth to uncover signals WWE may be treating this as a longer-burn angle, and that gives his return run added creative stability beyond short-term wins.

His comments about volume of work across matches and media also suggest WWE sees him as a multi-use talent in this phase, not just an occasional featured act.

Quotes

Quote from Aleister Black

“First and foremost, I consider it a massive success. A lot more work, a lot more things that I have done inside the ring and outside the ring. I like being busy; once I feel like I am not busy, I feel like I am not doing something right. The amount of work I have had within WWE has been a lot, which is good. Several main events, headlining several Smackdown episodes, merchandise sales, commercials, various interviews, and then obviously as of recently, working the main event with Randy Orton and beating him. I cannot really complain when it comes to that. Can we do better? We can always do better. Even if I would have been at the highest of highest of echelons, I would still find things of myself that I would be like, ‘I can improve on this or I can improve on that.’ So, I consider it to be a very good year, very fruitful, very exciting, and very diverse. A lot of changes, a lot of new things. I was happy that I was able to bring over something that I was working on at the end of my first run when we did the Dark Father. This whole corrupting people character that was going to start with the Dark Father and obviously had its life in AEW for a minute, bringing that over to WWE, I feel like it has a lot more legs. With Randy, it has not even seeded as much as it is going to, which is a really cool prospect for me. I should be very happy and excited to be doing what I am doing. It feels very good.”