Malakai Black Recalls Paul Heyman Telling Him He Had One Night Of Control As WWE Raw Executive Director

AEW star Malakai Black made an appearance on Talk Is Jericho to discuss a wide range of topics. 

During it, the former WWE star talked about Paul Heyman being a supporter of his when he was the Raw Executive Director. Heyman was in this role from June 2019 through May 2020. 

“Since day one, me and Paul have meshed.  I love that man.  I have so much love for that man.  He’s always been really good to me.  He’s been blunt with me, which I appreciate.  I appreciate people being blunt with me.  I don’t like to dance around subjects.  Just tell me how it is.  Paul had big ideas, not just with me, but with a lot of younger people, Buddy Murphy being one of them as well.  He once told me that he had one night of control.  That was the first night he was on, and after that, everything became a fight.  Everything became, well, maybe fight is not the right word, but it became a debate, which I can understand. 

Sometimes it makes you wonder, but I let that go of what could be.  We were fighting tooth and nail to get the room (when they had someone knock on the door) because the room needed to progress as it was the same thing week in and week out.  The promos became more and more vague.  That ran for a little bit.  As it was supposed to transition to something else, it didn’t.  We wanted to get to one point, and then completely switch it up.  That’s how you do it, that’s how you progress. 

You have to go to the next level because this, in my opinion, had shelf life.  I think Paul felt it had shelf life too, and we wanted to progress, but the progression was never approved.  The progression never came, and eventually I became lost in the shuffle because the discussion wasn’t had.  When the discussion was trying to be coined, it never went anywhere no matter how many times I knocked on the door, tried to sit down and explain that we had to do something.  I heard, ‘No, we’re good for now.’  I’m like, ‘No.’  When you’re in the business for so long, you feel when it’s time to shift the dynamic.  I feel now we have to do something new.  I felt right after the Buddy Murphy thing, ok, here we go, but it was right back in the room.  I felt that was the wrong move because we had momentum.  We had steam, but Buddy went with Seth.”

H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription