During his latest Twitch live stream, Malakai Black (formerly Aleister Black) provided details about his AEW debut on the July 7th 2021 edition of Dynamite. Black brought up how his WWE non-compete clause was only for 30 days:
“It was a hassle to keep under wraps. Once I found out that my contract was a tad different than the usual, I just came up with this idea. I had already made the character movie and I came up with this idea and the company liked it so we ran with it. 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. Kudos to AEW and the entire crew. What a great operation they have there. 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 a good feeling. It’s been a rough seven or eight months but I feel like I got a win last night. I feel wrestling got a win.”
Black also revealed that the lights going out “technical difficulty” during the Cody Rhodes vs. QT Marhsall match was part of the show:
“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.”
(quotes courtesy of Fightful.com)
