Malakai Black requested his release from All Elite Wrestling a number of weeks prior to their All Out PPV Event, but his request was denied at the time. Immediately following his match at the AEW All Out Event, where the House of Black lost a Trios Match to Sting, Darby Allin and Miro, Black waved to the fans in attendance, bowed and hugged the other members of the House of Black and it was believed that after the promotion’s All Out PPV Event Malakai was done with the company.
A report was then made by Fightful Select that several AEW talents believe Black has been granted his release from the promotion, but that he’s under a “conditional release,” which means that he is under some kind of a non-compete clause with AEW, so a WWE return won’t be happening anytime soon and Black is said to not be interested in working for Tony Khan again.
Dave Meltzer had a lengthy discussion with Bryan Alvarez on a recent Wrestling Observer Radio Program on the situation with Malakai Black as it is interesting that he said in his statement on Sunday that we have not seen the last of him. Meltzer also noted that Black wanted out of his deal with AEW as he wanted to return to the WWE, but he still has about four and a half years left on his deal, though it will be really difficult to keep someone who is unhappy under contract for that length of time.
This is what Dave Meltzer said:
He wrestled last night, which is interesting.” “Then he put out a statement today and he wanted out from AEW. I guess we’ll see what happened. Obviously, he wanted to go back to WWE and he had a lot of time left on his deal. I think 4 and a half years left on the deal. It’s an interesting thing because it’s really difficult to keep someone who is unhappy under contract for that length of time. He did sign for that length of time. The reason you sign people to contracts is so that they can’t it they get unhappy or somebody makes an offer somewhere else, they can’t just go the next day. The whole reason he was signed to a 5-year big money contract was so if something happened in WWE and they wanted him back and they changed his mind, that they had him and they could book him for all those years. So it becomes an interesting situation and the same goes in the other direction too.”
Meltzer also noted that Black was given a push, but he ended up not being used as much because he was dealing with an injury and that is why he was put in a Trios Matchup situation more than a one-on-one Matchup situation. Meltzer then said the conditional release that Black is under could mean that it’s a situation where he can’t return to the WWE and that there is a timeframe before he can do that, but Black wouldn’t agree to the conditional release if the timeframe was four and a half years.
This is what Dave Meltzer said:
“He had a push there and he was hurt, which was part of the problem. I think he had a bad back and so he was used not as much as late. They put him in the Trios thing so the other two guys…it’s a lot easier with an injury to be in a Trio rather than being used as a singles guy a lot. I guess we have to wait for it to play out and see what the situation is. Basically, it’s what type of a deal he and Tony Khan came up with. Tony Khan wouldn’t talk about it. He talked a lot but didn’t say any specifics as to what the deal is. The story going around was that it was a conditional release and what that meant, I don’t really know. The assumption of a conditional release is that it’s probably something where he can’t just go right to WWE. Maybe there’s a timeframe or something like that. I don’t think he would agree to it if the timeframe was four and a half years.”
There’s no word yet on if Malakai got an offer to return to the WWE, but there have been reports that WWE allegedly reached out to a number of contracted AEW talent and the talents that WWE is interested in are those people that worked under Triple H in NXT.
