Malakai Black took to his wife Thea Trinidad’s Twitch channel on Thursday to discuss his AEW debut, offering details on his ideas for his character, ring music and future plans.
h/t to Fightful for transcription.
Black said that only a handful of people knew that he was set to debut at the Road Rager episode of Dynamite, a fact only made possible due to a WWE clerical error that left him free to sign with another company.
“Once I found out that my contract was a tad different than the usual, I just came up with this idea,” said Black. “We made it a thing to make it available to as limited people as possible because that’s how you keep it under wraps. Security, Cody Rhodes, and a few others. It may have been five or six total people.”
“It was all very last second. I feel like, in modern day wrestling, there are few moments to make a genuine surprise and get people to look your way. For me to sneak in, not be seen, dip and dive so they wouldn’t see me, that took some skill.”
Black said that his creative vision for his character involves playing a heel, an idea he had wanted to use since debuting in NXT. He said that Triple H envisioned him as a babyface in NXT, so the character was shelved. Black said that he has new entrance music and ring gear set to debut as well.
Regarding the blackouts that teased his eventual debut during Road Rager, Black said that they were his idea.
“I pitched that idea and said, ‘What if we do multiple blackouts throughout the show and insinuated the technical difficulties?’ Commentary did a great job getting that over and it came off great,” said Black.
“It feels good where I’m in a place where my creative mind can be utilized instead of stopped and controlled and knowing that things weren’t going to work.”
Black stated that his decision to go to AEW was made for a combination of reasons, and that his debut was one of the highlights of his career.
“It was the right move for me to make for me, my family, my career, the state of mind I’m in. It’s just a really good company. I can’t say enough good things about it. They have a bright future.”
“Last night was top three one of my favorite moments of my career… It was the cumulation of months and months and months and having this big payoff was worth the pain, chaos, and perseverance,” said Black.
Black also spoke of AEW owner Tony Khan in glowing terms in response to a fan question on the Twitch stream.
“My first impression of Tony is great. What a f—ing wonderful dude. Really nice guy. Loves his company, loves wrestling.”
An archived video of the entire stream can be found here.
