LA Knight’s WWE journey has been far from straightforward, and the star believes the company was even in the process of firing during his current run.
Knight first signed with WWE back in 2013 but was released a little over a year later after failing to make much of an impact. From where Knight headed out onto the independent scene and found success with IMPACT Wrestling. During this period, WWE tried to re-sign him three times, but he turned the sports entertainment giant down believing they weren’t offering enough money.
The star formerly known as Eli Drake eventually found his way back to WWE in early 2021 and he went on to impress in NXT before moving to the main roster 12 months later.
However, by the time he arrived on SmackDown, Knight was renamed Max Dupri and acted as manager of Maximum Male Models. By September, Knight ended his relationship with the group and returned to his brash LA Knight persona.
During an appearance on the Insight podcast with Chris Van Vliet, Knight explained that he thought WWE was in the process of firing him before he was repackaged as Max Dupri and moved to the main roster.
Knight added that he feels he’s found more success under his current moniker as it’s much closer to who he is in real life.
“Well, let me just go ahead and say this, I’m pretty sure I was fired. And it just hadn’t officially happened yet. Without getting into too many details, some things happened. I don’t remember what it was, but some things happened. And then I had gotten a FaceTime. ‘Hey, you know, we want to keep you around. We want to do this, this, that whatever.’ And, okay, cool. Good.
So somehow I had been saved from being thrown off the cliff. At least this is my interpretation of it. Maybe I’m incorrect, I don’t know. And so eventually, just things kind of worked out. And I think that maybe again, maybe some of the testament to why things are working the way they are and the people reacting the way they are, is because one of these was not me, and I didn’t know who it was. And one of these is very much just me.
I don’t have to think about LA Knight, I don’t really have to dig in like, what is this? Who am I? What am I doing? I just go and do, because it’s just me heightened. You and I have been to a party together, I think you’ve been to one of my parties. I am a heightened personality at the party. So like, to me, my personality on TV is an amalgamation of me at a party and me in an argument. And when those two together, you’ve got LA Knight.”
LA Knight Not Sure Why He’s So Popular In WWE
During the interview, LA Knight his recent explosion in popularity despite still working as a heel. The star said that not only does he not understand what caused fans to get behind him, he doesn’t really want to know why it happened either.
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