Jim Ross has no doubt Aleister Black will keep finding work. He just thinks Black needs to stop talking about what went wrong.
Ross was asked about Black’s situation on the latest episode of Grilling JR, following Black’s recent comments about promises he says WWE made him before he left AEW. Ross, who ran talent relations in WWE for years, started with the talent evaluation.
“He’ll always find work because he’s a hell of a hand. He’s got a unique look, and can have great matches with a variety of talents, as a babyface or a heel,” Ross said. “So I’m a big fan of his work. He won’t have a problem, in my opinion, finding more work.”
From there, Ross turned to the way Black has handled his exit publicly.
“He needs to get off the drama train, for sure,” Ross said. “I have no reason to think he’s not telling the truth, and this is how he perceives what his issues at WWE were, or what was promised. Did you get the promises in writing? Then I don’t mean s***.”
Ross said the fix is a simple contractual one that too few talents insist on.
“You can easily add a little addendum to a contract and say WWE hereby guarantees the following for said client, blah blah blah. Easy, and that way they got it on paper,” Ross said. “So then this issue would be a non-issue, because you got it on paper. It’s a whole different set of rules.”
That point comes from experience on the other side of the table. Ross ran WWE talent relations across two stints in the 1990s and 2000s and negotiated many of the contracts from the company’s biggest period, which is the seat he is speaking from when he talks about what does and does not end up in writing.
His warning was about how the situation looks to the next employer.
“He needs to get away from all the drama, because nobody wants to hire somebody that they perceive might be a headache,” Ross said.
Asked whether Black’s presentation could work in other promotions, Ross didn’t hesitate.
“It can work anywhere. It can work anywhere,” Ross said.
Ross said he has no insight into what went wrong for Black in AEW.
“I don’t know what his issue was in AEW. I’m not in that loop,” Ross said. “But he’s really a good talent.”
Black was released on April 24 as part of a round of roughly two dozen post-WrestleMania 42 cuts that also included his wife, Zelina Vega, Kairi Sane, Zoey Stark, Andre Chase, the Motor City Machine Guns and the entire Wyatt Sicks group. He had returned to WWE in April 2025 after four years in AEW as Malakai Black, where he led the House of Black and held the AEW World Trios Championship with Brody King and Buddy Matthews. His second WWE run lasted just over a year.
In the interview Ross is responding to, Black said the release hit him harder than his first one because of what he says he was told during the talks that brought him back, and described the year as a disappointment despite the opportunities he was given.
Ross is not the only figure from that era to weigh in. Eric Bischoff said on 83 Weeks that Paul Heyman pushed hard for Black during their time as executive directors in 2019, while also saying he found the broken promises account hard to believe and suggesting Black take responsibility for his own situation.
Black has not responded publicly to either man’s comments.
