Malakai Black says his AEW character takes on a “disturbing” and “cult-like” childhood

Malakai Black is applauded for the strength of his character’s work as much as for his talent in the ring. The most moving performers of this art form often come out of their experiences. The cult-like hidden character that Black presents in All Elite Wrestling is no different.

He first performed as a Tommy End on the independent circuit. This cult character became Aleister Black in the WWE NXT. In AEW, Black represents a more painful supernatural borderline iteration of the former Tommy End.

“I’m great at tattoo culture. I’m very involved in the alternative music scene. Black is primarily metal and hardcore,” Black told CBS Sports. “I’m fascinated by the hidden, because I grew up in a certain house with very disturbing and interesting things. So I know how I grew up living with these cult characters. I understand that. This is part of it. I can put myself in these characters. In a year, two years it must have taken off. It must have your essence.

“I think when you grow up you start to understand yourself a lot more. Especially the traumas of the past. You start to acknowledge and get over it. And when you get over it, you can get out of it. You know don’t fight yourself. They work with you … The older they get. the more you understand yourself. “

See the full interview with Malakai Black below.

Black hesitated to spread his childhood. He wanted to make it clear that many of the people involved in his early life worked hard to grow. It was important for Black to keep in mind that openness on the subject could affect others who have made progress in their lives.

“Obviously, this is all the more questionable, but the problem is that a lot of these people are alive and a lot of them have changed their ways. So I don’t feel comfortable talking about it,” Black said. “I don’t want to be overwhelmed by their hard work because I felt the need to talk about it on a platform. These people have worked very hard not to be in that position.”

After some thought, Black touched on the aspects of his family life that affected his interests and the character he portrays.

“Parts of my family grew up with an unusual kind of religion and it was a very‘ end of the world ’kind of religion,” Black said. “It was a great disaster. You are on this earth, so you are a sinner. It doesn’t matter what you do. You have been sent here to Earth and you are sweating and you will work. There is no love. There is no affection. [and] God works for your redemption. And fortunately, at the end of that redemption, at the end of your life, you have recovered enough of yourself to gain a place in paradise.

“The 50’s, 60’s and 70’s were very important times for many people, where the world began to change and open their minds. New ideas would come in. Many of my family members were conflicted in that ideology. It affected them in a negative way. So they did, but it affected their personality and their way of perceiving the world, because they didn’t get it, because they were protected for it. ».

His family’s ties to that religion greatly influenced him.

“It really affected my childhood, of course, because those who raised me were connected to those religions or because they were shaped by those religions,” Black said. “I don’t want to use the word brainwashing, but I want to use the word lost. Brainwashing is a very heavy way, but if you don’t know better than what it presents to you when you’re growing up, then it’s very difficult to escape the indoctrination you’ve endured. Immersing myself in this family history and immersing myself in all these people and immersing myself in many of these religions, which is a small branch, I think only today. Only 100,000 people follow it. It’s pretty dark. how they see the world.

“Basically, I took that and saw it as a child and took a lot of the stories I heard and adapted it when it first started as Tommy End. That’s why I started reading. Esoteric topics. because one is so miserable and, in my eyes, I mean, almost like a miserable way of living your life .. They are against anything very different, so I began to be fascinated by the other. “You get involved in these things. I find it fascinating. There are so many religious systems in the world and what is perceived and accepted, and what’s wrong. And why isn’t it right? I got into it in a way. I always found it very interesting.”

Black was more fascinated by his grandfather, who allegedly had his experiences with the dark arts.

“My grandfather was a very Roman Catholic on his mother’s side, but he was sent to Malaysia. [when] He was 17, 18 years old. He was just a child of the church and then he’s being thrown into this post-World War II society, ”Black said. It was a small town in the Netherlands.

“She’s in her late 40’s and she’s on this completely different side of the world, where everything seems different and different. more to the world than to what he is doing. “

Black told the story of the actions of black magic that his grandfather had allegedly seen in a Malaysian village.

“That was also something that had a big impact on me, because my grandfather used to tell me horrible stories, and this might have been weird, but he was telling me stories about things he saw with black magic in Malaysia,” Black said. . “It was a kind of voodoo that they used to call Guna-Guna. He took part in it because he saw it happening in the camps. It also sparked my interest.

“When I was growing up, I was faced with a lot of weird things, but it really challenged everything and made me look at the world differently than many children. It was a very interesting childhood in a sense. You know what I mean? A lot of difficult moments and growing up very , very, very difficult, often disconnected. It was certainly not your normal childhood in terms of these things. “