AEW Star Recalls Infamous Botch During WWE Run

AEW

An AEW star has recalled an infamous botch during his WWE run.

Before signing with All Elite Wrestling, Malakai Black made a name for himself from 2016 to 2019 in WWE NXT as Aleister Black. He became a former NXT Champion and 2019 Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic.

During his NXT Championship reign, Black defended the title against Lars Sullivan at TakeOver: Chicago in 2018 where the finish did not go as planned when Black went for “Black Mass” had a timing issue.

Speaking with Bobby Fish on The Undisputed Podcast, Black recalled the botch and working on a different finish on the house shows leading in. He said:

“There’s a few ones (spinning heel kick) that I’ve very horribly missed. It happens with everything…”

“There’s one in particular that’s always like, you know, it’s the one that I always refer to and it’s kind of funny because it relies on a lot of the body control and technique that one becomes being an in-ring competitor, how both people have to be in tune with the right footwork and stuff and even then, like the example I’m about to give you is a moment where there was a disconnect and thousands of proper attempts, thousands of successful attempts and then only one thing tweaks and it just crumbles, right?”

“That’s how delicate it is. So it’s myself as NXT Champion against Lars Sullivan and I think you guys already know what I’m talking about…”

“And I hit that stomp on his back, we get up and he’s supposed to feed into me and take the heel kick and back when we were in NXT, we used to have the live events a lot of times, we would run the match on the live events but we would not run the actual finishes, right?”

Black continued on to note that his house show matches went well before their TakeOver bout, saying:

“So every night, me and Lars are having a fantastic match. It’s a lot of fun and obviously, the only thing we tweak is the finish so instead of hitting the spinning heel kick, I’d use a regular knee, follow up with something else.”

“So, when the time of the pay-per-view comes, that same, exact same thing, I hit him and I remember Terry, Terry Taylor, right before we go out, Terry said to Lars, ‘Make you sure that you come in correctly. Time it right’ because it was delicate. It was very delicate but you know, we wanted to pull it out and I hit him, I roll through.”

“He gets up, I get up but there was something and… every single time I’ve ever seen him afterwards, he’s always apologized for this. But it’s just about the delicacy of it, right?”

“Because I’m expecting him because I’m gone because we ran this same type of body language and timing every single night and we were successful.”

The House of Black leader concluded on by reflecting on the finish from the NXT TakeOver: Chicago finish, saying:

“We just exchanged the technique and now because it’s distinct and for some reason, as he turns, he takes an extra step for a sell and then he feeds in so you see my kick go because I’m anticipating his body language because we’re clocked in, right?”

“He took an extra step and he didn’t know why and it completely, obviously, it misses and there’s a timing issue and again, these things happen, these things happen.”

“And especially that thing with Lars is like, that shows you how delicate that turning my back for a second is because it was one timing issue, one split second of him taking that extra step and it threw everything off and it’s a house of cards man.”

Malakai Black is currently one third of the AEW World Trios Champions with Buddy Matthews and Brody King of The House of Black.

Stay up to date with the AEW roster’s win-loss record (for televised matches) at this link.

Transcription via POST Wrestling

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• Aleister Black
• wwe nxt
• Malakai Black
• AEW

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