Aleister Black Explains Why So Many NXT Call-ups Struggle on WWE’s Main Roster

Aleister Black was released by the WWE last week. While the former NXT Champion had received plenty of television time on both Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown and showed a lot of promise with the new “Dark Father” persona he was unveiling, he never found the same momentum he had captured on the Black & Gold Brand. Black’s struggles were just the latest in a long line of wrestlers who find great success in NXT only to flounder once they get called up to either Raw or SmackDown, something he discussed while appearing on Renee Paquette’s Oral Sessions podcast this week.

“I think one of the main issues is that there [are] too many cooks in the kitchen,” Black said. “Whereas Hunter [Triple H] has a vision and oversees the entire vision with his team. He always puts his ear to the ground and he communicates very one-on-one with his talent and everybody shares his vision. Where I feel the main roster a lot of people think that they know Vince’s [McMahon’s] vision, they haven’t closely followed the people that are being brought up. Vince sees individuals and is completely mesmerized by them. And then when he has them he’s like, ‘All right, where do I place you?’ I feel the time spent with ‘where do I place you?’ kind of loses it because it taking too long for people to be placed. Whether that’s because the rotation is too quick or people don’t have a creative vision coming in or people rely too much on letting the main roster do your creative work for you, who knows?

“I think it’s a combination of both, I don’t believe in one party always being the complete blame for everything,” he continued. “When you come in you’re a professional, you need to have a vision for yourself. You need to have a vision, you need to have ideas continuously. Even when you’re not empty-handed, it just sometimes doesn’t always translate the way that you want it to translate. Or it doesn’t go with the vision that you want it to go. Because at the end of the day there’s one man in charge of the vision, and if that vision doesn’t pan out the way that it should pan out it’s hard to stay afloat.”

Black was very grateful for his time with the WWE throughout the interview and went into great detail about how supportive McMahon was of his persona. His 90-day “No Compete” contract will prevent him from signing with another major wrestling promotion until September.