10 Unthinkable Origins Behind Famous Wrestling Moments
1. There Is A (Fictional) Murderer In AEW
Opinions vary on Malakai Black's AEW run.
Nobody is saying he's not an awesome pro wrestler, but the gimmick is divisive. The aesthetic, the doom metal entrance, the jumping knee strike: awesome. Mist, too, is awesome, but is it mist? It's not just something that injures people for a while or takes them out of the match. This mist has...eurgh...lore to it.
It "changes" people. Penta is now Penta Oscuro, having been driven to his dark side by "the mist". Malakai is more interested in corrupting his opponents to prove that evil is within everyone or something than actually beating them. There's probably a dissertation-length r/SquaredCircle thread that explains this somewhere. Black mist in wrestling history does blind and sap victims of their strength for prolonged periods, but why does it also change managers into kids who like Halloween when they're a bit too old?
Can Malakai Black not just be a heel who cheats in his pursuit of championships in a uniquely cool way?
Unfortunately not.
This is an unthinkable origin story for a pro wrestler entering a promotion tethered to reality: he self-published a short film in which he exited a psychiatric hospital but not before murdering a doctor on the way out. The history here is that there was never an "Aleister Black"; his WWE run was a delusion, and Tommy End is the vessel used by Malakai to do the devil's bidding in AEW.
Shouldn't he be charged for the crime he has committed? Or is it all a metaphor?
F*ck knows.
Amazing leg sweeps, mind.