Aleister Black explains the ins and outs of his character and the backstage vignettes that have been running on WWE programming in recent weeks.
Appearing on the Swerve City Podcast, Black, who was accompanied by Zelina Vega, was asked about creating the character that is present on WWE. Black said he wanted to make sure he stood out from the rest of the WWE roster in every way possible, from his speech to his moveset and even his mentality.
"My character is not something that really is a character. Aleister Black is also a social statement and there's a lot to Aleister Black that I don't explain to an audience, but will do eventually. I think as a wrestler, you need to defend your psychology and you need to defend your character and explain your psychology in your character. That's why I made Aleister Black the way I did. It's because I feel the way I explain Aleister Black and I see it is that he stands out by the way he talks, the way he moves, the way he thinks... There's a big part of Aleister Black that is within myself. There's a lot of conscious thought process that went into designing it. Every day I find out things about Aleister Black that I say, 'Damn, he thinks like that,'" Black said.
Black has not wrestled much on WWE television, instead spending many weeks on SmackDown in backstage promos trying to get a challenger to come forward and face him. In explaining the idea behind those segments, Black explained, in his own words, that he wants someone to "end" him.
To further explain his character, Black said the way he designed him was to elicit a certain response from the crowd and also figure out what type of crowd he's facing based on those reactions.
"This whole pursuit of me wanting people to fight me is because I want someone to end me. That?s this whole narrative, end me. Come on do it, pull the trigger on me. Do it. It?s a metaphorical idea, but the idea that I?ve always had with Aleister Black in terms of a social statement is that I know what I look like. I know how I talk... I?m trying to evoke a response from you and the second I see you judging me for what I look like or what I?m trying to do, that tells me something about you as a human being. By your reaction on me, I understand what type of person you are and that?s how I designed Aleister Black. That's how I designed him. I want to have a response with Aleister Black. I either want you to be judgmental as hell, I want you to be uncomfortable,or I want you to be comfortable. You're going to love me or you're going to hate me but if you hate me, you're going to try and explain me in the sense that you're going to judge me because you feel like you need to validate yourself," Black said.
The full podcast can be seen in the video at this link.