Aleister Black has posted his first vignette since becoming a free agent, and he has shaved his head.
The video went up on Instagram on Thursday, captioned “I am the death of me.” It runs through his daily routine, taking in model painting, a range session, speaking and training, before he wakes from the pattern of it with a fresh shave and settles into Muay Thai work.
The look is the news in itself. Black has worn long hair for the entirety of his WWE and AEW runs, and the vignette is structured around losing it.
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The Muay Thai is not incidental either. He competed as a kickboxer before turning to wrestling, and the striking has always been the basis of his in-ring style.
Black was released by WWE on April 24, part of the round of cuts that followed WrestleMania 42. His 90-day non-compete expired on July 23, alongside those of Kairi Sane, Zelina Vega, the Motor City Machine Guns, Santos Escobar, Zoey Serrano, Bo Dallas, Erick Rowan, Nikki Cross, Joe Gacy and Dexter Lumis.
He last wrestled on the April 17 SmackDown, in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal, having been a regular on television through the first months of the year. He feuded with Damian Priest to open 2026, then Randy Orton, and was most recently working with Sami Zayn and Matt Cardona.
It was his second WWE release. Black was with the company from 2016 to 2021 and held the NXT Championship, then joined AEW as Malakai Black, where he formed the House of Black with Brody King, Buddy Matthews and Julia Hart and won the AEW World Trios Championship. He left AEW in February 2025 and returned to WWE that April, teased beforehand by a vignette during a SmackDown in Barcelona.
He has not said where he is going next, and has not indicated which name he intends to work under. Vega, his wife, was released in the same round and has filed a trademark application for a new ring name.
