AEW's Malakai Black LOVED Working With This Top WWE Creator

All Elite Wrestling star Malakai Black has showered WWE's Triple H with praise, saying that it felt more like he was working with the former NXT creative chief rather than for him during his time in WWE.

Speaking on The Universal Wrestling Podcast, Black said that rather than handing ideas to him, Triple H would ask the former NXT Champion for his own input. This was particularly pronounced after Black's TakeOver: WarGames (November 2017) match with Velveteen Dream, which left a lasting impression on Triple H (h/t Wrestling Inc.):-

“Someone like Hunter [Triple H] did this thing where he would work with me and instead of like giving me the ideas, he’d be like ‘hey, so what do you wanna do?’ He’s like, I got you for a reason. In the beginning and ya know, I’m the beginning of NXT, I was super confused, I had so many people in my ear and it kind of took me a while to figure out who I was and what I needed to do. Case and point, my first match at TakeOver just wasn’t good against Andrade, it’s just not what it needed to be. We were instructed in a certain way and now, we at least knew what we did not want, right? I think that at the third TakeOver, with my match with…and like, it’s obviously a bit of a different individual nowadays in terms of like mentioning him but let’s look at the wrestling, not at the person, but Velveteen Dream. I remember vividly telling Hunter, ‘let me do this, let me call this, if I completely screw this up then the ropes are back in your hand, you tell me what you wanna do’ because I had a good feeling about this one, I think I had a good feeling about what he wants. So, when we came back, he’s like ‘I’m never telling you what to do ever again’ and I was like ‘OK, thank you!’ And it was from then that he really wanted to work with me. I’m sure there’s still like, through the TV’s, there’s what he thought was best…and I would listen but you and I had many conversations in regards to where I felt like I would not, ya know, verbalize myself in these ways but I’m so time, we found a good balance."

Signing with WWE in June 2016 after making his name as Tommy End, the future Malakai was rechristened "Aleister Black" in January 2017 and stuck with NXT until being called up to the main roster in April 2019. Triple H, who created NXT in 2010, served as the black and gold brand's creative lead for the entirety of Black's developmental tenure.

Continuing, Black elaborated on the creative understanding he forged with Hunter:-

“But Hunter was definitely a guy that said like ‘what do you want to do, what do you think, what do your characters think? Like, ya know, he would work with me because he knew where I came from and he knew what I did and then he went, I have this dude that looks this way and he doesn’t these certain things, I don’t want to tell him how to do it because he’s clearly understanding what I want from him and I can now help him... But he would work with me, he wouldn’t try to stop me, he wouldn’t try to like influence me, he wouldn’t say no, do it this way, he would say ‘OK’ and he would find the middle ground and we would both put in our pennies and clearly it was a success and clearly what we wanted to do, ya know, it worked. He made me a marquee player in NXT because of working with me and not trying to stifle creativity and not trying to tell me what to do. There’s people who work really well with be given all their direction, but I need to be able to stretch my wings and I think that’s also one of the biggest differences between me in NXT and on the main roster.”

Triple H's control over NXT's creative direction continued until September 2021, when the show was given a complete makeover as NXT 2.0.

Black, meanwhile, left WWE in June 2021 after a miserable two-year run on the main roster, joining All Elite Wrestling the following month.