Malakai Black shocked the world when he appeared on AEW Dynamite just a month after his WWE release. Since his release, Black has taken to the popular streaming platform Twitch, using it as a platform to air his thoughts and feelings.
Talking on his wife’s (WWE’s Zelina Vega) channel he talked about how Malaki Black was a character a long time in development. Black elaborated, explaining that this was the vision he had from the very start. He even went as far as pitching the idea of Triple H ahead of his NXT debut.
“It’s funny. The reason I did this is because this is actually how I wanted the WWE version to be,” Malakai Black explained. “When I started, I wanted to come in as a heel. Hunter [Triple H] wanted me face. If anyone has ever seen any work of me on the independents, you would know that the gimmick I was portraying in the WWE was an amplified version of what I did on the indies. That’s why they wanted me. But I wanted to be a heel because I was coming off a heel run on the independents. But then Hunter had this idea of making me face, a stoic face character.”
Malakai Black Has Room to Grow in AEW
Malakai Black then went on to explain how he is enjoying the creative freedom afforded to him by AEW.
“It feels really good that I’m in a place now where my creative mind can be utilized versus stopped, and controlled, and being presented in things that I know are not gonna work. Because, no offense, I knew a lot of the stuff wasn’t going to work. I said that to them as well back in the day. Lo and behold it didn’t work.”
The level of frustration behind the words speaks volumes and echoes the thoughts and sentiments of other released superstars. However, WWE’s loss is AEW’s gain, and Malakai Black is now free to unleash his full creative force on the world. We have already seen glimpses of Black’s creativity. The wrestling world now waits with bated breath to see where he goes from here.
