AEW Star Confirms They've Been Dealing With a Career-Threatening Back Injury

AEW's Malakai Black has only wrestled 17 matches since the start of 2022, the majority of which have been either six-man tag matches with The House of Black or tag team bouts alongside Brody King. It turns out the former champ has been dealing with a back injury that had him contemplating retirement. He posted a video to his TikTok this week explaining that it took a year of rehab for him to finally start recovering, sharing footage of his sumo deadlifting 365 pounds and undergoing dry needle acupuncture. 

"Till about 3 months ago I was dealing with a back injury I was convinced was going to force me into retirement, but after a literal year of treatment that went from working to complete failure on several occasions we all of a sudden hit the correct vertebrae during a dry needling session and everything released. From there we were able to rehab and strengthen. You can check video 2 for this horrendous view and my personal reaction to it. However, allowing me now a few months later to slowly move back into deadlifting and a few more compound moves," Black wrote.

@malakaiblxck

Till about 3 months ago I was dealing with a back injury I was convinced was going to force me into retirement, but after a literall year of treatment that went from working to complete failure on several occassions we all of a sudden hit the correct vertebrae during a dry needling session and everything released. From there we were able to rehab and strengthen. You can check video 2 for this horrendous view and my personal reaction to it. However, allowing me now a few months later to slowly move back into deadlifting and a few more compound moves. #deadlifting #recovery #injury #rehab #dryneedling #malakaiblack #houseofblack #prowrestling

♬ original sound – Malakai Black

The former NXT Champion was released by WWE in early June 2021. But thanks to a mistake with his contract, he was able to jump to AEW just one month later and immediately entered a program with Cody Rhodes. He and The House of Black are currently in a program with Miro, teasing whether or not "The Redeemer" will join the group after Black sprayed him with his corrupting mist. 

Black gave an interview with ComicBook last December in which he explained the symbolism behind some aspects of his presentation. That includes the deterioration of his right eye, which actually carries over from when Buddy Matthews tried to blind him while the two were still in WWE.

"A lot of people started really digging through my old stuff and really found a bunch of really cool creative things. They haven't completely discovered everything that I've did already with Malakai or am doing as Malakai. But, one of the things that I can tell you is that when I released 'The Devil Made Me Do It' little movie, video trailer, teaser, whatever you want to call it. There's a funny thing where a lot of people thought that it was a dig towards my former employer, but it was actually not at all. It was a creative way for me to ease out of Aleister and move into a different realm. The idea behind it is that this greater entity known as Moloch or Malakai in this case, this messenger, orchestrated this whole idea that Tom was in a, what's the best word to describe this, had this episode that lasted almost five years wherein he believed that he was Aleister and that he believed that he was a fallen angel with memory loss or Lucifer or Satan, however you want to call it," Black said.

"He had this episode, this manic episode, where actually it was Malakai who orchestrated all of this and through the injury in his eye was able to kind of like fracture apart in being able to manifest himself through the eye," he continued. "That's also why this thing on my face keeps growing and growing because he becomes stronger and stronger, and it reacts to certain events and certain happenings. So in a way, it's a continuation, but at the same time, there's a layer above the layers. I've said this and I've referenced this many, many times for me, wrestling is a lot more than just us versus them or you versus me. It's a creative outlet for me. Some like it, some don't. I don't care. It's about what I want to do and clearly what I do works. A lot of people are intrigued by it. Sure, people are not going to be intrigued by it. That's fine. It's a part of like this, I dove into a sea of what can I do with this? I'm still swimming down to whatever I can find, like the bottom of things. I keep discovering new things and keep discovering new layers and ideas that I find interesting that I feel that I can stick on to this character and create this character. It becomes its own universe in a way. It's just a very creative outlet."