AEW star Malakai Black made an appearance on Talk Is Jericho to discuss a wide range of topics.
During it, the former WWE star talked about where the Aleister Black name came from:
“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.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription
