Aleister Black’s call-up happened pretty much exactly like you thought

Remember when Tommaso Ciampa, Johnny Gargano, Ricochet and Aleister Black showed up on Raw and SmackDown out of the blue while they were still in the midst of ongoing storylines down in NXT. Did that seem more out of nowhere to you than a RKO?

That’s because it was! As Aleister Black explained to Sheamus on the latest Celtic Warrior Workouts:

“And my call-up was obviously a quick one, cause I wasn’t scheduled to be called up yet. It was a last minute decision... We were like - I remember Saturday in this very gym [in his home garage/gym in Orlando], I was just done and we had a NXT live event that night and it was 11:30, and I’m thinking to myself I don’t have to leave until 1, I was gonna take a little 45 minute nap, you know? We don’t get many, we don’t get a lot of sleep.

I had my phone placed next to me, and I’m starting to doze off and my phone goes, and it’s Coach Bloom... ‘I have some news for you.’ I’m like ‘You are firing me,’ as a joke. He’s like, ‘Something like that... this Sunday you’re flying to’ I can’t remember where I flew to because - they flew us somewhere we weren’t making our debut deliberately so... because they didn’t want us to be seen by fans lining up at the airport, they wanted it to be a surprise... ‘and this Monday you make your debut on Raw and Tuesday on SmackDown,’ and my exact sentence was get the f*** out.”

My favorite bit is how Performance Center Head Coach Matt “Albert/Tensai” Bloom laughs about how leaving NXT for the main roster is “something like” being fired.

For more from Aleister, or just to watch him, Sheamy and Zelina Vega sweat while doing kickboxing-inspired workouts, pull up episode 81 of Celtic Warrior Workouts here.