Aleister Black: WWE Evolution and AEW Malakai, Explained
What do you think is going on with Tommy End and Malakai?
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Aleister Black was one of WWE's most enigmatic characters: an occult martial artist with a stoic temperament, he was unlike almost anything the company had seen before. And they let him go, hey ho, at least Tommy End: the man behind the gimmick gave us some good insights into his character and that might affect what he's doing with his new character too!
#WWE #AleisterBlack #WrestlingDocumentary
What do you think is going on with Tommy End and Malakai?
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Aleister Black was one of WWE's most enigmatic characters: an occult martial artist with a stoic temperament, he was unlike almost anything the company had seen before. And they let him go, hey ho, at least Tommy End: the man behind the gimmick gave us some good insights into his character and that might affect what he's doing with his new character too!
#WWE #AleisterBlack #WrestlingDocumentary
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SportsTranscript
00:00 From the moment he rose up out of the mist, spat forth from the void, Aleister Black went
00:17 after the NXT title like a man possessed.
00:20 Foes were ceremonially dispatched with a black mass, exercised of their consciousness until
00:26 he was raised up above all.
00:28 But if you know your bible then you know that pride goes before a fall and there aren't
00:33 many people who fell further or harder than the Devil himself.
00:37 What I'm trying to say here is that the main roster did Aleister Black dirty.
00:40 Even so this enigmatic figure with a devil at his back was slowly revealing more to us
00:45 while on Smackdown until the latest round of cuts cut that short.
00:50 Now seemingly having escaped the madhouse he's emerged from the darkness, redubbed
00:55 Malakai Black and begun claiming skulls in AEW.
01:00 Which makes now a great time to look into the legend and the lore of Aleister Black
01:03 and what that might mean for Malakai in AEW.
01:07 The Devil's in the details, I'm Laurie Hailing from partsFUNknown and this is the
01:11 evolution of Malakai Black Explained.
01:41 Aleister Black came into NXT with a big ol' Beelzebuzz about him.
01:55 As Tommy Endy torn up the independent scene as an anti-hero, cult leader like figure with
01:59 an idiosyncratic in-ring composure and devastating martial arts moves.
02:04 In NXT he was the recipient of Da Big Push, rocketing to the top of the card and punctuating
02:09 his segments with a crowd-pleasing spinning kick before stoically stalking to the back.
02:14 The character's origins mostly remaining a mystery.
02:17 Black revealed on Edge and Christian's pod of Awesome that it was he and Triple H who
02:21 transformed Tommy Endy into Aleister Black.
02:25 "We started shooting names back and forth and I think he saw what I was trying to do
02:29 and then he shot me a name and I was like, 'I don't hate that, but can we put it
02:33 in these letterings?
02:35 Can we put it this way?'
02:36 It came out to be Aleister Black and I was like, 'That's it.
02:40 Bingo.'"
02:41 I think what Black was trying to do was evoke the name of infamous early 20th century occultist
02:46 and writer Aleister Crowley, once dubbed the "wickedest man in the world".
02:51 Edward Alexander Crowley had grown up in an evangelical household of the non-conformist
02:55 Christian denomination the Plymouth Brethren.
02:58 His upbringing had given Crowley an aversion to Christianity.
03:02 As a religious sceptic he developed a budding interest in occultism and became a practitioner
03:06 of magic, which he spelt with a K because he was cool like Mortal Kombat.
03:15 He also joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn who believed they had secret wisdom passed
03:20 down from ancient times.
03:22 But a 1904 trip to Egypt would change everything for Alexander.
03:26 It was here that he claimed to have had a mystical experience, a meeting with a being
03:31 called Aiwas who dictated to him a prose poem which he wrote as the Book of the Law.
03:37 His most famous teaching?
03:39 Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
03:42 It's the idea that humans have their own true will, a grand destiny or a moment to
03:47 moment path of action that doesn't occur through conscious intent but instead exists
03:52 in harmony with nature.
04:00 Crowley founded a religious system called Thelema with this as its core tenant.
04:05 He renamed himself to Alistair and grew his belief system to include drug experimentation
04:10 and forms of sex magic.
04:13 Don't Google it.
04:14 Whatever you do, don't Google Cakes of Light.
04:24 For his beliefs and for a story of a follower of his at his abbey in Sicily dying after
04:28 apparently consuming the blood of a cat, Crowley was lambasted in the British press
04:34 and disgraced.
04:36 But after his death his notoriety turned to fame as the counterculture of the 60s adopted
04:41 him as a sort of libertine forefather of sorts.
04:52 Beyond just the similarities in spelling, some other links can also be drawn to a certain
04:56 Mr Black.
04:57 After his WWE release Black revealed that he had originally wanted to join the company
05:01 as a heel but it was Triple H who wanted him to be a face, which meant "I had to switch
05:06 the character from being this obnoxious, sadistic, possessed by a demon guy to the same possessed
05:11 by a demon devil guy but then having remorse."
05:14 Later in life in a work titled The Equinox of the Gods Crowley wrote "To me at that
05:19 time Iwas was an angel such as I had often seen in visions, a being purely astral."
05:26 So you've got two men who both renamed themselves to Alistair, being spoken to by angels and
05:32 both being dubbed dark and depraved by those around them.
05:36 Admittedly Crowley also described Iwas as the messenger of Horus, as much of his pantheon
05:41 was lifted from Egyptian mythology, but Black even alluded to that on his Instagram during
05:46 a weeks long build to his return as the Dark Father with this post "Father Osiris through
05:51 death brought life" Horus being one of Osiris' sons.
05:56 This is probably me just being silly but in Egyptian mythology Horus, the falcon headed
05:59 god had his eye torn out by his rival Set, which is one letter away from the other famous
06:06 eye gouge of Seth.
06:17 But it's no wonder when this eye stuff came up that Black picked it up and ran with it
06:22 as it all feeds into his internal mythology.
06:26 He also carried the eye forward into the Dark Father and now AEW revealing on Twitch that
06:31 But the Aleister Crowley-esque occult proclivities were just part of a melting pot of religious
06:52 ideas that it appears Black drew on for his character.
06:55 As mentioned before he envisioned Aleister as someone possessed by the devil with remorse
07:00 extrapolating on that idea on Twitch.
07:24 And that's something that was only really hinted at on WWE TV and in random posts on
07:28 Black's Instagram but the signs are there.
07:32 His finisher being called the Black Mass is an obvious one as Black Masses are ceremonies
07:35 heavily associated with satanic groups and historically are a way of subverting and desecrating
07:41 Catholic worship.
07:42 And the candles used as part of Black's entrance evoke that feeling of a ritual and
07:46 the way he rises up gives the impression that he's been spat right out of hell or from
07:52 beneath a trap door.
08:02 His gear too began to become more demonic as the mask of stoicism slipped.
08:19 Even his early main roster gimmick of waiting for someone to knock on his door reminds you
08:24 with the phrase "if you keep knocking on the devil's door, sooner or later someone
08:28 will answer you".
08:29 I.e. you don't go tempting fate and don't go looking for a fight with Black.
08:33 But back to that idea of will once more.
08:36 On his Instagram Black revealed that he used different coloured lights to match his opponent's
08:40 gear, furthering this idea of destiny having shown him the future.
08:43 He was also playing the role of tempter here, daring people to pick a fight with him.
08:48 Then after six months on the shelf he emerges from the chrysalis of catering as the Dark
08:52 Father, or more likely the messenger of the Dark Father.
08:56 He told tales of how he was trained, marked and moulded by this father figure to become
09:01 the man he is today.
09:09 Now Satan is well known for taking the form of a serpent in order to whisper sweet nothings
09:14 to Adam and Eve, but was also a great red dragon defeated by Archangel Michael and cast
09:20 down in the book of Revelation, again drawing strong ties to the idea that Black is the
09:26 devil, or at least controlled by him.
09:29 Dark Father also sounds a lot like a name for Lucifer if you were trying to keep it
09:32 on the DL.
09:33 Plus the way the figure looms behind Black, merged with his shadow, says that he is either
09:37 closely watching or joined with Black in some way.
09:41 Then you have to take into account the shadow puppets used to narrate the whole story, all
09:45 of those are being controlled by a shadowy hand, a visual representation of being manipulated
09:51 by some unseen force.
09:54 This could also tie into that idea of destiny, playing out the motions of some otherworldly
09:59 will.
10:00 And then something like the Devil Made Me Do It short comes along where Black becomes
10:03 Malachi and it blows the whole thing wide open again.
10:07 Not only does the title reference the infamous case of Arnie Cheyenne Johnson, who murdered
10:17 his landlord and pleaded his innocence in court after claiming he'd been possessed
10:21 by a demon, subject to the latest Conjuring movie, just in case you thought this was documentary
10:26 footage.
10:27 But Black also sings a few bars of the Golden Earring song to close out the short.
10:33 And then the new name he's given himself, Malachi, is likely derived from the book of
10:49 Malachi from the Hebrew Bible.
10:52 The book is often attributed to the prophet Malachi, though it may not actually be the
10:56 author's name at all, as it simply means 'my messenger' in Hebrew.
11:01 So a dark messenger certainly gives off the vibe of someone possessed and builds on the
11:06 idea of the man who told the tales of the Dark Father.
11:11 So this short does something really interesting then, it kind of creates a Tommy Endiverse.
11:29 Something as simple as this subtle dig at his WWE tenure from 2016 to 2021, 5 years,
11:34 rewrites his history there as either a figment of a troubled imagination or somebody else
11:40 being in control of the vessel that is Tommy End.
11:43 And now whatever is calling itself Malachi is in the driving seat.
11:47 The Dark Father becomes a Dark Passenger, the demon inside that makes us all do terrible
11:52 things.
11:53 Which was a concept used in Dexter to explain his urge to kill, and in the books this was
11:58 explored as an entity that might be the offspring of the god Moloch, which we all know from
12:02 that episode of Buffy.
12:03 But in the Dexter TV series it traces its route back to childhood trauma.
12:09 Black has previously opened up about traumatic moments in his own childhood and how he had
12:13 to overcome them, and also his own battles with anxiety and depression which can also
12:19 be a form of a Dark Passenger.
12:21 So what if this is all just some manifestation of his mental state?
12:26 Professor Carl Jung described the aspects of our personalities that we choose to reject
12:30 and repress as the shadow.
12:33 He believed the psyche is something that can be divided into component parts which function
12:38 like secondary selves contributing to a whole.
12:41 He said "No one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort.
12:47 To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present
12:52 and real."
12:53 So what if all the different forms of black are aspects of Tommy End or Tom Budgen's
12:58 fractured mind?
12:59 What if these secondary selves, these unconscious parts of the mind take over in moments of
13:05 weakness as a way to cope?
13:08 That's why we get the stories of the Dark Father, the metaphorical mythologizing of
13:12 Tom's own upbringing, an origin story for the tattoos and martial arts expertise.
13:17 Maybe that's why the father figure looks so much like the Babadook to me, making a
13:21 monster out of your emotions and trauma, much like the Duke was a manifestation of grief.
13:26 The Duke.
13:27 And it might also go all the way back to the way he described his entrance.
13:32 Black said "People think it's a coffin, but it's not.
13:35 It's literally, I'm just propelled out of a void.
13:38 I just come out of nowhere.
13:40 I materialize.
13:41 Same as the room.
13:42 The room is a non-existing place.
13:44 It has hints of supernatural.
13:45 But what if it's not supernatural?
13:48 What if that void was Tom's unconscious and Black rising out of it was him taking
13:53 control?
13:54 There's also something lovely about that in shoot terms, of that being the moment he
13:58 also steps into character and gets into the headspace of Aleister Black.
14:02 But whether or not Aleister and Malakai and Tommy are all kayfabe aspects of Tom's mind
14:07 as well as shoot ones, we'll need to wait and see as this devil lets his disguise slip.
14:13 Thank you for watching this latest episode of Explained, if you enjoyed it leave a like
14:24 and a comment telling me what you think is going on with Malakai Black, and if you fancy
14:28 more deep dives into character lore, why not watch this one about The Fiend?
14:32 I'll see you next time, Jam That Jam.