Kinda, you can't have the event horizon without a singularity. The one thing I'm not 100% sure on is whether an event horizon can form. I have never been able

Kinda, you can't have the event horizon without a singularity. The one thing I'm not 100% sure on is whether an event horizon can form. I have never been able to shake the feeling that with Hawking radiation giving each black hole a large but finite lifetime and with matter falling in beyond the infinite future (to outside observers) you'd have the incoming matter encounter the death of the black hole before it can fall in. This would make a black hole a kind of explosion powered by Hawking radiation that looks frozen in time to outside observers. Lacking a complete theory that can adequately explain both Hawking radiation and general relativity it's quite hard to know if this makes any sense. Though I can't rule out an answer already exists but is simply not known to me.