LA Knight was talking to ’em, and the crowd were listening.
Following the 2023 Royal Rumble, LA Knight started to gain considerable support from the WWE Universe, with the crowd often showing him their support regardless of whether he shared the ring with a face or a heel. It wouldn’t be until the summer that his presence onscreen became more consistent, leading to him challenging Roman Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship by the end of the year.
Appearing on The Ringer’s Wrestling Show in Philadelphia ahead of WrestleMania 40 this weekend, Knight revealed his frustrations during the period before his push materialised, noting that he was concerned the company would take too long to pull the trigger and that the audience would lose interest.
“There was a lot of frustration at that time. I’m getting these big reactions and there were weeks of, ‘there’s nothing for you to do.’ I’m like, ‘Was anybody listening? Was anybody watching?’ There was all this hesitation. ‘This might not be real, this might be a fluke.’ There was one time, I blew up a year ago. We were in LA, SmackDown, the night before WrestleMania. I was in the Andre The Giant Battle Royal. I had already been getting some pretty big reactions for the last three weeks to a month, but now we were in LA and the place was all for me in that battle royal. Coming back, I passed straight through Gorilla, didn’t say anything, shake hands or nothing. I ran into one of the social media guys and he was like, ‘Man, you’re over out there.’ I was so happy with the reaction that was out there, but simultaneously pissed off because of it. It was so big and I felt like nobody was listening. I got back there, and when that guy said that, I was like, ‘You better effin tell somebody!’ I went and walked off and just started pacing the hallways like a tiger. I just went to the most empty part of the hallway I could find. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. This was April. Things even still, from there, didn’t start to go anywhere until July. It was months and months of me being like, ‘I swear nobody is paying any damn attention. Nobody is listening to what’s happening every time I go out there. I don’t get it.’ Then we get to Money in the Bank. ‘I have an idea, I want to do this, this and this.’ I remember someone saying, ‘You have to be over to do that.’ I’m like, ‘Are you not watching! Are you not paying attention!’ I feel like a douche saying that. To put myself over to that degree to be like, ‘You know I’m over, right?’ It fills me with douche chills. At the same time, how, how, how, are you not noticing? We get to Money in the Bank, the reactions are nuts, we move on from there, and finally it’s like, ‘We’re going to have to do something.’ Finally, it was moving in that direction. I was also thinking, ‘you’re going to make them wait so long. They’re going to stop caring.’ We are where we are now. Somebody obviously got smart to it and decided to pick something up, but there was a point in time where I was like, ‘we’re going to wait too long.’ I understand the idea of milking it and not giving people things too soon because if you do that, you get the Superman treatment of ‘this is the handpicked guy,’ and they rebel against that. I definitely didn’t want to go too fast in that regard, but I’m also thinking, ‘Holy shit, we’re dragging our feet right now, we’re going to lose them.'”
-LA Knight
Knight is set to face off against AJ Styles this Sunday during Night 2 of WrestleMania 40.
As always, we’ll aim to provide any further updates on the future plans for LA Knight as soon as we hear more.
H/T to Fightful for the transcription.
