LA Knight was talking to them.
LA Knight became one of the hottest starts in WWE in 2023, going from not being on the WrestleMania 39 card to challenging Roman Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship by the end of the year.
Knight was garnering big reactions from the crowd following the 2023 Royal Rumble, but it wasn't until the summer that he had a consistent presence on television.
Appearing on The Ringer's Wrestling Show, Knight was asked if he could feel in the moment the reactions he was getting if the delayed push was helping.
"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 is set to face AJ Styles at WrestleMania 40.
Fans can check out the lineup for WrestleMania 40 night one by clicking here and night two by clicking here.
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