During an appearance on Talk is Jericho, former WWE star Malakai Black talked about his business relationship with Paul Heyman during the time that Heyman was WWE RAW’s excutive director in 2019:
“Since day one, me and Paul meshed. I love that man. He’s always been really good to me. He’s been blunt with me and I appreciate people being blunt with me, don’t dance around the subject, just tell me how it is, especially in this business. Paul had big ideas, not just with me, but with a lot of younger people like Buddy Murphy. He once told me that he had one night of control, that was the first night. After that, everything became a fight. Maybe ‘fight’ is not the right word, but a debate. I can understand, but it makes you wonder. I let it go because we were fighting tooth and nail to get me out of the room and to progress.”
“Eventually, I became lost in the shuffle. No matter how many times I knocked on the door and tried to explain, it was like, ‘We’re good for now.’ You feel when it’s time to shift and that’s how I felt. I genuinely felt after the Buddy Murphy thing, ‘Here we go’ and it was right back in the room. We had momentum. What (Paul Heyman) wanted to do was set something up with Buddy where we could come back to it at WrestleMania in three, four, or five years down the line. Lay a foundation now and five years from now, circle back to it on a bigger stage. It writes itself. Plant some seeds, a couple years later, you pay it off. It never went there and I never felt it transcended despite the promises. You feel like you’ve thrown everything at the wall and the rest is history.”
