During a recent appearance on Chris Jericho’s “Talk Is Jericho” podcast, AEW Superstar Malakai Black commented on knowing it was time to leave WWE, whether he knew if his release was coming beforehand, and more. You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On his mindset at the end of his WWE run: “Towards the end of my stint in WWE, I felt it was time to go. And incidentally, I actually said that not too long ago. Because someone asked me about it, and I felt that it was just, they made the decision for me. But I told my wife months in advance, ‘Look, if this isn’t working out the way they promised me it was going to work out, I’m going to move on to different things.’ Because I feel like I hit a wall, and they don’t want to push me over the wall. And I’m not going to keep bumping my head into the wall, because eventually, I feel I owe myself to do more in life than, I don’t want to me ‘just there.’ I want to be a player. Everywhere I’ve ever been, I’ve been a player. And I want to continue being a player.”
On his release from WWE and if he saw it coming: “I have been told the actual reason, which I can’t talk about that. Because number one, it’s no longer relevant because I’m here now. No [he didn’t see it coming]. Because two weeks before I attacked Big E. on the night of the last vignette, I had a sit down with Vince. And he was very convinced of it, he liked it. I just wanted to get his thoughts, I hadn’t seen him in six months, a lot happened at that point. So I wanted to sit down with him a little bit and kind of see how he was doing.
We had a little bit of, just a normal conversation. Like I said, I wanted to gauge, ‘How do you feel about it?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, no, I like it. I like it a lot,’ And then when we did the attack on Big E, I came back. Something about it just didn’t feel right, and I told my wife … I don’t know what it was. The way he looked, something about it, there was a disconnect. And not a disconnect as in, ‘I don’t get it,’ but more of a — I kind of felt that he had made up his mind even back then. Which is, hey, it’s his company. It’s fine, no harm, no foul.”
On his 30-day no-compete clause: “I got my notice, and it read that I had a 30-day out instead of a 90-day out … So, I think they forgot about it. I think they forgot to update it. I remember seeing that. I took a picture of it, and I sent it to my agent. I’m like, ‘Dude, do you see what I’m seeing?’ He’s like, ‘Does that read 30 days?’ It’s like, ‘I think it does.’
So I contacted someone within the company. I said, ‘Look, am I reading this correct?’ And this person said, ‘No, that’s correct. Even now, I’m looking at it, you have 30 days,’ and I’m like, ‘Alright, perfect.’”
(h/t – 411 Wrestling)
