At a recent episode of Chasing Glory with Lilian Garcia, Aleister Black talked about his Tommy End Character. He also talked about his transition and how much of a role the Tommy End Character played in Aleister Black being born.
“There is a considerable amount of content to what made Tommy End, Tommy End and what makes Aleister Black, Aleister Black. There is a lot of similarities," he said. "Sometimes it feels like Tommy End shed his skin and became Aleister Black.
I truly feel like in WWE Tommy End could become Aleister Black. I needed that transition. "Throughout life I have developed a natural cynicism about myself and why I kind of look at everything with a magnifying glass. If you allow yourself to second guess certain things and look at things from a distance you don't immediately run into something blindfolded.
There is a lot of layers to what made Tommy End. I put a lot of that stuff where you are everybody's kid, and you are not listening to regular stuff. You weren't doing regular things so why are you trying to be a regular person, even if something is so strange and so dynamic like professional wrestling.
Basically, I created this character that is anti-hero, which is why I called myself 'The Anti-Hero' Tommy End, and from the moment I did that, that was it. I had something. People started to recognize it a little more because at the time there was something," he said.
"Professional wrestling in Europe is more of a sub-culture. It is not as popular as it is here in the United States. The people that were drawn to it were also people that were into sub-culture, hardcore sub-culture. It is basically an alternative scene that is sub-culture.
That crowd immediately was like, that is our guy. So, it didn't matter if I was a bad guy or a good guy, they got it, so because people got it I started to make a name for myself. I started to get noticed by promoters. We went from Germany to United Kingdom, to Italy, France, the ball just started rolling.
I went to Japan, went to North America a couple of times, it just started to get bigger and bigger all because I made that change, and down the line I made another change because I always had a fascination with the occults and what made the dynamics behind that.
So, because of that I started to implement a little bit more darkness into the character and it became a little bit more 'cult-leader type' and it started to resonate with people more and people started to say, oh my God, this is what I need to be, so everything I had done as Tommy End was setting myself up for Aleister Black."