Malakai Black recently appeared as a guest on Talk Is Jericho for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling.
During his appearance on the popular pro wrestling program, the AEW star spoke about his former WWE ring name of Aleister Black.
Featured below is an excerpt from the interview where he touches on this topic.
“Initially, me and Hunter started talking about a name, and he coined Alleister Black with a double L. He said, ‘My style is more like martial arts, but it’s Muay-thai and a little bit of kickboxing’ I didn’t want to be compared to Alistair Overeem. He’s Dutch. Out of respect for him, and I knew that if I coined the name as Aleister Crowley. I knew that certain individuals would write conspiracy things about me.
People thought that I was either trying to pay homage to the occultists. I just knew that it would get people talking. I knew people were, for good or bad, going to make references between the occult and that name, and they did, and they still do because of the symbolism that I use and all the weird connections that I make with my characters towards the darker side of things.
A really good chunk of occultist literature, but I have to find a way to translate it. I can’t just use iconography that is only known in a certain part of the world that hopefully people will pick up. It has to be in a Westernized way that people subconsciously or subconsciously pick that stuff up and make the bridges between them. That’s the tricky part, but that’s also been a very fun part for me.”
Check out the complete interview at Apple.com. H/T to WrestlingNews.co for transcribing the above quotes.
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