Former WWE Star and current AEW Star Malakai Black (Aleister Black) recently made an appearance on an episode of the Wrestling Perspective Podcast, where he spoke about still adjusting and absorbing from his time in the WWE and transitioning to AEW.
Malakai Black said:
“I’m still absorbing, I’m still absorbing.” “I come from the dojo mentality, so I was used to like sweeping mats and cleaning dojos and all that stuff. That’s always how I entered wrestling as well. I always kept that principle. That’s why in training, most of the times I wasn’t problematic. I got my ass chewed out a couple of times, as we all do. But I’ve always kept a level of trying to be humble all the time. One of the things I find very important is that especially the younger guys see that I’m approachable and that you can absolutely talk to me about things and that the older guard sees that I’m willing to learn, despite the things that I’ve done, that I’m still open about a lot of things. And I want the company to know that I’m there for them.”
“I had a good conversation with some of the members of the company. And it’s important for me, and I did this in WWE too, it’s important for me for them to understand I feel we’re all colleagues. From the ring crew to the lighting crew to the sound crew to the boys in the back to the people behind the table, we’re all part of the same team. I don’t look at anyone higher or lower, we’re all the same. We’re all there for one goal. And for me that’s always the important thing, that we’re all equal. I find the aspect of equality very important. I’m still slowly coming down on everything, because it’s a lot to absorb. I go from one place where I spent half a decade, dedicating myself, to now having a complete switch with another company that I’m absolutely going to give every single thing to. But it takes awhile to get rid of that half a decade of ‘this is how we did it there, and now we’re going to do it this way.’ And I’m still figuring that out. I came in the first time and I was like, it was that eggshell, eggshell feeling but it was quickly like everyone was like ‘no you don’t have to do that here. That’s not how we do things.'”
Malakai Black then talked about who he wants to face outside of AEW and that is NJPW Star KENTA.
Malakai Black said:
“One of the things I would really like is to compete against KENTA in Japan in his own setting.” “Not in a WWE oriented setting. Not that there was anything bad about it. But I would like to see what him and me could do without that environment, without people giving us cues and direction and basically just go ‘what do we really want to do?’ And that’s something I really want to have answered at some point. I think what he’s doing now, I think his work is phenomenal. I think he’s one of those dudes, he’s one of those once in a generation type of guys. He’s inspired a bunch of us, and like I said, he definitely inspired me. I think the role of him, as an athlete and as a human being, he’s always been a great guy.”
Malakai Black then talked about when he realized he made it in pro wrestling.
Malakai Black said:
“Two things.” “When I got my first contract in Japan and when I was finally able to pay all my bills from just wrestling income. And it sounds like, again, we just talked about the monetary stuff not being as important right? But at the same time if you get to the level where you can go ‘all my bills are paid? I have some money extra? I’m good.’ And I did that all with my own hands. I created that. And that’s what I felt was an unprecedented level of success for me as Tom the human being.”
You can check out Malakai Black's comments in the video below:
