WWE SmackDown star LA Knight was recently interviewed on INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet. Knight talked about the crowd reactions he’s gotten in the past year, not having a t-shirt at first, not winning a championship in WWE, memories of working with John Cena, people digging up his old acting work, being on The Rock’s reality show, emailing Triple H to ask for a job, Max Dupri and almost being done with WWE, and more. The full interview can be watched at the end of this article.
On WWE being slow to produce merchandise for him:
“It’s a process of getting all that stuff done because I have ideas for things and it’s like, you might try and run it through somebody. ‘Okay, well, yeah, we might do that’, and I think there was also just skepticism at first, like, is this really a thing? Is this just gonna be a flash in the pan? Is this just gonna be a flavor of the month? That was kind of even a thing that we had talked about and was even talked about with me. It was like, ‘Well, we don’t want to give it to him too soon because then they might get over it.’ It’s like, look, fine. If that’s the case and I’m not good enough to carry that, cool. Let’s go with that, but I understand the idea of also wanting to protect me at some point as well. I have the belief in myself that I can pivot and move and adapt to whatever the situation is. So if the thought is, well, you don’t wanna give it to him too soon, but if you just try not to give it to him at all, come on, man. I feel like I’m better than that. I don’t mean that in a boisterous way, but just, I’m confident in what I do. I’m confident in my skills. At the same time, I want to be able to fail because when I fail I get better.”
If he thought he was going to be released by WWE in 2022:
“Well, the problem is you look around the wrestling landscape, and I even think to my past and I’m like, man, I had so much freedom to kind of be me and do my thing and now I’m doing this damn, whatever this stupid model thing is. I don’t know who this is or what this is, but all right, well, I got a nice raise out of it so at least I’ll try and make this thing work.”
“So I’m sitting there and I’m trying to do it, and all praise to Mace and Mansoor because I mean, I even heard them kind of sharing the stories about how Vince was just, it was really weird because I was told not to talk anything like I did. Nothing. Don’t say any of the things you said. Don’t talk the way you did. I’m like, Okay, I mean, what brought me to the dance is getting completely stripped from me. But alright. I mean, at the same time, I kind of looked at it as a challenge. I’m frustrated by it but I’m also kind of like, okay, well, let’s see how we can do this.”
“Then, I mean, in short order, it was just like, this is crazy. He and I kind of, it’s not like we were butting heads necessarily, but it was just like, he had a vision for this thing that puts such a microscope on it and I didn’t know what the hell it was, but I was trying to figure it out. It just was not going well and I was very unhappy. Then at some point, it was just like, all of a sudden, I’m not on TV and I’m like, well, I’m pretty sure I’m fired. I’m pretty sure this whole ride is over. At that point, I’m kind of looking at other options in what I can do and where I can go to kind of, you know, just keep my whole thing rolling. Lo and behold, circumstances prevailed that kind of put me in the right spot where I could at least come back in a wrestling capacity, do my thing, and again, like I said, I don’t think there were great expectations thrust upon me. It was just, hey, here’s a guy who can handle himself. He’s a professional. He knows how to do his thing in the ring and he can work with some guys, he can have some good programs. Well, surprise, surprise on your eyes, because things just got a little crazy after that.”
On his promo in the ring with The Miz
“Miz was really bringing it to the point where like I remember a couple guys in the back just being like, ‘Wow, I feel like this is like the best work Miz has done in a while.’ Coincidentally, I felt like it was some of the worst work I’d done in a while. I hate pulling the curtain back a lot, but I’m not a good planner. I like to be off the cuff and I like to kind of just listen and react, but sometimes in these scenarios when you’re doing this, you have to plan a little bit more just because there’s so many moving parts and things like that and people want to know where you’re going and whatever. But in the past, other places I’ve worked, it’s just kind of, ‘Alright, well, we’re gonna go out there and we’re gonna generally talk about this.’ ‘Okay, cool.’ I’ll say some stuff, they’ll listen to me, and we’ll react and go back and forth. In this case, it was like, now I had kind of like planned canned stuff, but it’s like, I don’t know, whatever I’m thinking or saying at like three o’clock is not going to be the same stuff at eight o’clock, and so where I should have probably just dropped some of that stuff and just listened and reacted and just shot back that way, it was like, we got time, and I gotta hit the time, and they’re expecting this, so some of that I was just kind of like, Ah, this just doesn’t feel like my best.”
“That’s also I think, a bit of a process and still adapting because I’m still that old school, let’s go out and call it out there. Let’s go out there and do it on the fly, and let’s just kind of, you know, I’m gonna listen and react. I don’t want to know, and I don’t want you to know because I want it to be fresh. I want it to be real. Like, I don’t want you to already know what I’m going to say because then it’s like, ‘Okay, let me react. Let it be real and then that way, I can really digest what you’re saying to me, and then bring it back.'”
“At the same time, I think that feud in general, rivalry, whatever you want to call it. Some people hate the word feud. That in general I think helped elevate us both in certain ways because I mean, I think it brought out a passion in him because I think there are similarities between us even though I think we’re different, but we have some similarities to us. He was doing some great work, I feel like I was doing some great work, and at the same time, it was kind of like, showing a little bit of adversity because for so long, like I said, I was floundering and I wasn’t doing much and now it’s like, all of a sudden, now there’s a little bit of elevation. So okay, let’s show a little bit of adversity. Let’s show, here’s the guy who is established. He’s been there for a while. At the same time, I’m gonna get under his skin, he’s gonna get under my skin a little bit, but at the end of the day, I’m gonna kick his ass. So that’s really what it comes down to. So as long as that happens and we accomplish that, then we’re good.”
If he had regrets about not going back to WWE between 2016-2018
“Yeah, a lot of it. I had overstayed my welcome. It wasn’t overstaying my welcome, but I had overstayed bad booking. I had overstayed misuse. I’ve overstayed multiple regime changes, and so with that being the case, it was just like, man, it was like, start, stop, start, stop, start, stop. Then when they did throw me the bone and gave me the title, it was like they still didn’t really feature me as the main event and I’m like, what is this? It’s like a consolation prize or something. At that point, I was like, alright, I have to leave. I have to go, but the only reason I was staying was because I had been broke for so damn long and I’m now making good money for the first time. I had never seen money like this before and so I’m just like, I can’t pass this up. I need this at least for two or three years before I can go and take the risk in my mind from the first time around that is going back to WWE, and for what I was promised, it was not, ‘Hey, you’re going straight to NXT TV.’ It was, ‘We’re gonna bring you into the PC and then you prove yourself’, and that’s because I left with heat the first time.”
“So understandably, so I guess to a degree, but at the same time, I’m thinking like, I’m on TV. I’m ready-made. I’m proven in other places. I know how to do TV. I know how to do this stuff. Now look, WWE is always different from other places. It’s a whole other level as far as TV production and all that stuff, but not to toot my own horn, but if you look at what I would do on Impact or whatever else, I think that I knew how to work TV above average from most of the people that were there. I know how to work the cameras but also interact with the crowd and the house and stuff like that whereas I think a lot of people struggle with that, especially guys who come from the Indies because they want to go to the crowd. Some people only do the camera and then they never, you know, look at the crowd or that stuff. So it’s finding those balances and stuff like that. So I’m just like, why am I only going into the PC, but again, it was because we want to make sure you’re a team player, this kind of stuff and whatnot.”
“So finally when I did make the jump over there, there was a little bit of, not necessarily negotiation, but it was just kind of like, I knew I was going to have to take a pay cut coming in, but I was willing to take the pay cut on the bet that I could turn it into much more because I had hit the ceiling basically in Impact and I had an awesome time and NWA for that little bit that we were able to do before the pandemic hit, but I knew that I needed to be, although I’m gonna tell you during the pandemic 2020, I remember having a conversation with my girlfriend and just being like, ‘I gotta accept that this thing was just over and nobody’s taking me now at 37 or whatever it was at the time. I just gotta make whatever money I can in any of these other companies.'”
“I had been given Triple H’s email and his phone number just before the pandemic started. I was like, well, what am I going to do with this, I have no relationship with this guy. Like, I mean, we knew of each other and like, I had spoken to him once or twice the first time I was in NXT but like, I didn’t have a relationship where I was like, I could just hit him up. So my relationship was with talent relations and I’m like, I’m probably gonna get heat if I go over their heads, so I’m just not gonna mess with it. But then when I was at the point where I’m like, this ride is probably over, I was like, well, screw heat. Who gives a sh*t about heat. I’m messaging him. So I was like, ‘Hey, look, this is what I’ve been doing for the last year that ended. Here’s pictures, here’s videos’, whatever, and then I just let talent relations know, ‘Hey, look, by the way, I sent this email, whatever. Just giving you a heads-up’, and that’s where it was just kind of like, ‘well, we got to talk about some things.’”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Chris Van Vliet with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. Quotes were transcribed by Jim for WrestlingNews.co.
