Malakai Black is taking time off to ‘recalibrate;’ promises to return

Following House of Black’s match at the All Out pay-per-view a couple weeks ago, Malakai Black seemed to say goodbye to the live crowd. Days later, reports started going around that he had received some kind of conditional release from AEW.

This came after he recently mentioned a back injury he thought might be career threatening and reports of personal issues, though it’s never been made clear what those are.

Now, Black has spoken out for the first time since all this, taking the microphone following a match at a Prestige Pro Wrestling show in California just last night:

“On a real note, I understand that all of you have questions. What am I doing? Where am I going? … Understand that in due time I will answer the majority of these questions. However, for the last 22 years of my life I have never, not once, taken one step back and recalibrated my life, and took a chance to kind of look back at all the stuff that I’ve done in ring but also the stuff that went to outside of the ring. … I had this one attitude towards wrestling, which was you gotta think globally not locally, because if you think locally you’re going to get stuck in one place. That applies to everything, by the way. If you want to branch out, you gotta not be worried about the little things. As cliche as that sounds, it’s what got me here to the United States. So, for the 22 years that I have given my absolute everything to you, who are more than deserving of it, you have all been fantastic. Please, allow me to take a few weeks, maybe a few months, to just recalibrate myself. … I promise you this is not goodbye, this is just we’ll see each other soon.”

AEW has not publicly commented on the matter either way.