Stephanie McMahon Planned On Getting A WWE Tattoo, Aleister Black Reacts To WWE Return, Batista On Earning Respect

Although there were some initial nerves, Aleister Black quickly felt right at home upon his return to WWE.

It’s now been a full month since Black made his comeback to WWE on the SmackDown following WrestleMania, marking his first appearance with the company since 2021.

Between 2021 and 2025, Black competed in All Elite Wrestling. In a recent interview with The Atomic Drop to promote WWE Clash in Paris, he reflected on his return, saying that everything felt right and immediately made sense. He said,

“I’ve been thinking about that a lot and I feel like it happened very organically. I think the first day that I came back, like physically being backstage, you know, walking around and talking to people and being quote-unquote reintroduced to the company and stuff like that. It’s strange, right? Because it’s like a mixed feeling of nostalgia and familiarity whilst there is something unknown, because obviously as much as the setup is the same, internally, its guts have been like rearranged if that makes sense, because it’s no longer the same people in charge, but at the same time, it’s the same people that I connected with the first time around. And I remember being very nervous, but then realizing that everything felt the same in the most positive sense and then I was like, why are you so nervous? You know all these people. And then at that point, it was really strange. It was like all my anxiety just kind of dropped. And I’m like, yeah, this time around, it’s even better, you know what I mean? Because I’ve always had a good relationship with Triple H, and I get along great with Nick Khan, and the locker room is something that I’ve always preached about, how fantastic the boys are in WWE. And it just really felt good, it felt like coming home, and I know that sounds somewhat cliché, but I’ve never experienced that feeling of coming home in that sense, and I think that was the first time I could ever say it felt like coming home and everything made sense again. I was in that system for eight years and it is a completely different system than anything else. Nothing is like WWE, no locker room I’ve ever been in, and it just felt like this is what it’s supposed to be for me, you know? I was really excited to be back, of course, and like I said initially, it’s a little bit anxiety-driven. But then once you walk around and you get a feel of everything, you’ll say to yourself, hey man, you know all these people, you know all this and everybody’s just going around doing what they always do and everything is just right, it works, everything runs so smoothly. Then, we get ready for the show, and here we go, rock and roll, everybody’s heading in the same direction and that’s just a really good feeling.”

Stephanie McMahon doesn’t have any tattoos, but she has considered getting inked.

On a recent edition of her “What’s Your Story?” podcast, Stephanie shared that she once came close to getting a tattoo of the WWE logo. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she even updated the idea to symbolize her three daughters. However, concerns about how her body might react to the ink ultimately stopped her from going through with it. She said,

“When I was younger, I wanted a tattoo and I was going to get the WWF logo. Thank God I didn’t do that. I’d be like a walking billboard if I had all the different logos that have evolved over time. I’m tatted on the inside.”

Her guest on the episode, Dominik Mysterio, chimed in to say he got his first tattoo at age 15.

During his rise to stardom in WWE throughout the 2000s, Batista shared the ring with some of the industry’s biggest names, engaging in memorable rivalries with legends like Triple H and The Undertaker.

In a recent interview with Sports Illustrated, Batista reflected on his transition to Hollywood, expressing his desire to earn respect in the film industry just as he did in professional wrestling. He said,

“In wrestling, the respect I earned from people like The Undertaker, Triple H, and Eddie Guerrero meant everything to me. It’s the same in Hollywood. I want to feel like I deserve to be here, that I’ve earned my place among the best.”

(h/t – Fightful)