AEW superstar Malakai Black recently joined the Universal Wrestling podcast to discuss a wide range of topics, including how much longer he thinks he has left to wrestle, and how he hopes to share the ring with Adam Page, Keith Lee, and Swerve Strickland before he hangs em up. Highlights from the interview are below.
How much longer he thinks he has left:
I’d say I have a good five-to-eight years left, hopefully, you know? If my physique holds up in terms of pain management and stuff because I’m pretty beaten up but not to the point of like, I can’t compete anymore. But, there’s definitely some miles on the wheels. But you know, time will tell and let’s hope I get to do all the stuff that I wanted to do and you know, see myself against Hangman [Adam] Page at some point relatively soon but I’ve never tangled with Keith Lee, Swerve [Strickland], one of my kids that I’ve mentored for a long time. I still do to this day.
How his current AEW character is what he wanted his NXT debut to be but Triple H wanted him to be a babyface:
If you look at what I do in AEW now, my style is much more ground-based because the character’s different. I didn’t wanna waltz into AEW and do an Aleister [Black] character, you know what I mean? I wanted to do something that was in the line of what people were used to seeing. I didn’t wanna alienate my pre-existing fan base from the days of ‘Tommy End’ going into WWE, from NXT to the main roster and then going into AEW, I didn’t wanna alienate anyone but I did feel highly that I needed a different idea, different identity that was still threading the same lore’s that you previously — and funny enough, I always kind of considered this installment of who I am to be a mesh of, you know, the years on the independents and then the years in WWE NXT predominantly and then kind of blend it together and that’s what Malakai basically became and even more funny though, this was actually the character that I was supposed to debut with in NXT but then Hunter wanted the character to be a good guy, and this is the same character that I got picked up on from the independents because if you go back ten, 12 years and you look at the Sumerian Death Squad and the tag team stuff that I used to do, the symbolism that we used and the promos we did and these vignette-type promos that we used to make for PROGRESS and ICW, it all stems from that and then obviously, all everything that I learned in NXT and in the main roster and talking and learning from people like Shawn Michaels and Terry Taylor and Triple H and you know, Robbie Brookside and Norman Smiley and even Vince [McMahon]. Just listening to him talk and even Pat Patterson sometimes taking me to the side and verbalizing with me.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling
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