Malakai Black on How Well Triple H Worked With Him in NXT, Getting His Wings Clipped on Main WWE Roster

– During a recent interview with the Universal Wrestling Podcast, AEW star Malakai Black discussed how Triple H worked with him to develop his character in NXT, and having his wings clipped on the main WWE roster. Below are some highlights (via WrestlingInc.com):

Malakai Black on how Triple H helped him in NXT: “Someone like Hunter [Triple H] did this thing where he would work with me and instead of like giving me the ideas, he’d be like ‘hey, so what do you wanna do?’ He’s like, I got you for a reason. In the beginning and ya know, I’m the beginning of NXT, I was super confused, I had so many people in my ear and it kind of took me a while to figure out who I was and what I needed to do. Case and point, my first match at TakeOver just wasn’t good against Andrade, it’s just not what it needed to be. We were instructed in a certain way and now, we at least knew what we did not want. I think that at the third TakeOver, with my match with…and like, it’s obviously a bit of a different individual nowadays in terms of like mentioning him but let’s look at the wrestling, not at the person, but Velveteen Dream. I remember vividly telling Hunter, ‘let me do this, let me call this, if I completely screw this up then the ropes are back in your hand, you tell me what you wanna do’ because I had a good feeling about this one, I think I had a good feeling about what he wants. So, when we came back, he’s like ‘I’m never telling you what to do ever again and I was like ‘OK, thank you!’ And it was from then that he really wanted to work with me. I’m sure there’s still like, through the TV’s, there’s what he thought was best…and I would listen but you and I had many conversations in regards to where I felt like I would not, ya know, verbalize myself in these ways but I’m so time, we found a good balance.”

Malakai Black on how Triple H worked with him: “But Hunter was definitely a guy that said like, ‘What do you want to do, what do you think, what does your character think? Like, ya know, he would work with me because he knew where I came from and he knew what I did and then he went, I have this dude that looks this way and he doesn’t these certain things, I don’t want to tell him how to do it because he’s clearly understanding what I want from him and I can now help him. Again, even still that process you’ve been thinking about, it was a lot of…I wouldn’t say ups and downs but there were a lot of like, ya know, curves and a lot of like, learning moments and a lot of conversations, which you and I both know, conversations in wrestling are always plenty. Conversations to be had prior to like doing one thing and that’s the nature of the business and that’s fine, it’s also TV. But he would work with me, he wouldn’t try to stop me, he wouldn’t try to like influence me, he wouldn’t say no, do it this way, he would say ‘OK’ and he would find the middle ground and we would both put in our pennies and clearly it was a success and clearly what we wanted to do, ya know, it worked. He made me a marquee player in NXT because of working with me and not trying to stifle creativity and not trying to tell me what to do. There’s people who work really well with be given all their direction, but I need to be able to stretch my wings and I think that’s also one of the biggest differences between me in NXT and on the main roster.”

On his match with Adam Cole at NXT TakeOver: “That me and Adam Cole had at Philadelphia [NXT] TakeOver, it was a street fight if I remember correctly, it was the perfect audience that was in the perfect town, it was the perfect person, Paul Heyman, introducing that pay-per-view and everything aligned there,” Malakai remembered. “On that night, Adam, who is a phenomenal wrestler, I hold him in high, high regards, he did such a great job, ya know, selling the character that was Aleister [Black]. That was always a big thing for me, Taker used to come up to me and say ‘just make sure that whenever you wrestle, people…people cannot be normal with what you are’ and even now in this, in this installment, people can’t look at what I do and just go ‘right, regular guy.'”

“He’s like because you’re not a regular guy and characters like ours need to be sold by the individual. He always mentioned Shawn [Michaels] being so good at it because Shawn would like mock him but then all of a sudden, Taker would go like insane and be like, oh [rolls his eyes], ya know. I mean, there would always be an uh-oh moment and that would sell the character and Adam did that naturally, I didn’t have to tell Adam anything, Adam understood…Adam understood what I represented and Adam worked with it. Adam’s a guy, that in my opinion, especially around that time, is a very well-rounded, ya know, person, he’s got a good look, he’s got a great promo, he’s for a charismatic face, has great wrestling ability. We’ve had so many matches, which I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad match with him because he’s so organic, he’s so natural and that night, a lot of things just kind of came together. What I particularly remember from that match, was there’s a part where he throws a chair at me and I catch it and then, like, I’m on the top rope and I said ‘not today, Cole!’ and he super-kicks the thing right in my face and I fall off the top and I fall through a table. I remember going ‘yeah, that table didn’t break my fall at all, I can’t breathe’ [laughs].”

Malakai Black on having his wings clipped on the main WWE roster: “I definitely had my wings clipped in the main roster but I also thought to myself ‘don’t be that guy, don’t be that guy,’ and I think I listened to that a little bit too long,” Black said. “Having said that, eventually when I started talking, we got into the Buddy Murphy and Malakai Black thing, which was positive but I felt like it never progressed due to the aforementioned reasons.

“The one thing I will say, I’ve always had this in my head where I felt that the room promos eventually ran its course, even [Paul] Heyman said that. But Vince [McMahon] liked them very much and he never really wanted him to change very often and we were like ‘OK’ but we felt like we needed to… everything needs to evolve, ya know? I wasn’t the biggest fan of the ‘pick a fight’ line but again, I didn’t wanna be that guy, I was given something, so I tried to make it work but eventually, when me and Heyman both felt like, OK it’s running it’s course and these promos are not completely connecting, it was intriguing but it never went anywhere. I felt like we were never able to like, see the evolved version, we would never see what was going to happen next because the whole world changed and what we were filming changed and the narrative changed and where I was placed in the program changed and all these things were happening.”