The latest guest on the AEW Unrestricted podcast was House of Black member Brody King, who spoke in detail about how his contract with the promotion came together, naming Malakai Black’s WWE release as a key moment in a weird series of events. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
Talks his contract coming together in AEW:
“It was just kind of weird. Like you said, a lot of people that were probably excited for me to be there were also maybe campaigning for me to come there. Guys like MJF and Darby [Allin], there’s a whole list of people that I used to work with on the indies, and we all kind of came up together. So, they would check in every couple of months and be like, ‘Hey, when is your contract up, when are you coming here?’ Then obviously with the fallout of Ring Of Honor, the gears started turning a little bit more. I got in contact with Tony [Khan], I think maybe the day after the news of Ring Of Honor broke. It happened quite rapidly.”
How the wheels really started turning for him when Malakai Black got released:
“I would say the wheels really started turning when Malakai got released from WWE. We kind of started putting this House Of Black, Kings Of The Black Throne thing together. It was cool. Tommy was like, ‘Well, let’s just see if we mesh well together in the ring and just kind of get some reps in and see where this goes. Hopefully, it will take off from there,’ and I think it has.”
On the vision of House of Black:
“I think Malakai has a very specific vision in mind for the House of Black. It fits very much into what my aesthetic and beliefs and everything else. Usually he’ll have an idea, and he’ll bring it up to Buddy and I. We just kind of riff off of that. I think it’s funny because this is very different for Buddy. He’s not used to the darker end of things or the religious cues that we have in our stuff, and the tattoos, obviously. It’s kind of teaching him – he’ll come to us and be like, ‘What do you think about this?’ We’ll go, ‘That’s a little more Slipknot, we’re kind of going like death metal or black metal.’ We’re able to teach him along the way what we’re going for and what the roots of everything are coming from. Right before Buddy, debuted Malakai sent pages and pages of what references he gets for the House of Black. All this stuff you can pull from, and I guaranteed Buddy was like, ‘What the hell have I got myself into?’
(H/T and transcribed by 411 Mania)