After weeks and weeks of back-and-forth banter, the idea of the feud between LA Knight and Logan Paul ending in a qualification match for Money in the Bank felt like a borderline impossibility.
Sure, Jalen Brunson and Tyrese Haliburton were included in the angle, too, which certainly made the match a memorable effort indeed, but when you consider Knight flew to Paul's house, sat in his pool, and effectively broke that sacred level of work-home separation, such a meager resolution just didn't feel right, especially considering no one has wrestled Paul for his belt in months.
So naturally, after coming up short in Toronto, Knight came down to the ring on SmackDown with a chip on his shoulder and a challenge on his mind, letting Paul and the rest of the professional wrestling world know that he was looking for a very big match later this summer in Cleveland, Ohio.
“Let me talk to ya. Money in the Bank came and went, let’s be honest, I ain’t gonna stand out here and complain, I ain’t gonna cry, I ain’t gonna make excuses, it didn’t go my way. I get dumped out on a ladder and somebody else reached up and grabbed that Money in the Bank contract. So then I just start thinking to myself, I start thinking: Money in the Bank contract or no Money in the Bank contract, I told y’all it doesn’t make a difference. I am the walking embodiment of Money on the Bank, yeah! So what that’s got me doing is let’s rewind our mind just a touch, because let’s go ahead and look at the path to Money in the Bank. I got a little piece of footage I think we should take a look at,” LA Knight told the crowd on SmackDown.
“Now you look at that, you look at what happened right there. Every single person in this building right now. Every single person at home, what they saw was they saw this man move on to Money in the Bank, right? Yeah! But let’s look a little deeper. Let’s think about what we really saw there, cuz yeah, I did move on to Money in the Bank, but there’s something more important that happened right there. What happened right there is I pinned the United States Champion. With that in mind, I got a little something delivered a little bit earlier, hot and fresh in Nick Aldis’ office, and uh, let’s just say what this has inside here was just for me. What this had in here had Nick Aldis’ signature already on it. And what this is is a contract for the United States Championship at SummerSlam.”
After signing his stage name on the dotted line, Knight let it be known that the only thing missing to make the SummerSlam match official is a Paul's John Handcock, which he will pursue vigorously until the deal is done.
“Now the only thing missing, I look through here, I see a signature from Nick Aldis, yeah! I see a signature from LA Knight, yeah! The only thing missing is a signature from that edgelord, Logan Paul. So what I want to do, I would love to have Logan Paul come right down here and sign this contract right now,” Knight declared. “But don’t get too excited. That ain’t gonna happen, I can’t do that. You know why? Surprise surprise, all of your eyes, guess who ain’t here? Logan Paul. But Logan, you can rest assured one way or another, I will get this contract signed. It will be you. It will be me. And guess what? At SummerSlam, I’ll own you, I’ll own that belt, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Not because you’re not good enough, but because I won’t let ya. And that’s not an insult, that is just a fact of life, with everybody saying, (LA Knight, yeah!) yeah!”
With SummerSlam coming to fans from mere miles away from where Paul grew up, fans always assumed that the “Maverick” would be on the show broadcast live from Cleveland Browns Stadium one way or another. Going up against Knight, especially if the “Megastar” actually goes over, would be a fantastic way to send fans home feeling like they've just watched something important, as even if Paul is handed an L at the end of the match, the duo could both be elevated by a fantastic effort in a spotlight stadium match.
LA Knight talks his WWE workout tape with Triple H
On a less serious note, LA Knight caught up with Fightful's Joel Pearl ahead of Money in the Bank and was asked one of the most pressing questions in professional wrestling: how did he end up in a workout video with Triple H?
“That’s the only workout I think I’ve done. It was interesting, to say the least. I don’t know that any of us knew what we were in for. They were just like, ‘Bring workout clothes with you.' Then we got there, and they had other workout clothes for us anyway, so it didn’t really matter,” LA Knight told Fightful. “We came in, and they wanted to keep everything hush-hush and quiet. We had an idea that we were going to be doing something physical when we got there, but we didn’t know exactly what. Then we found out we were doing the old Triple H workout video. If I remember correctly, the main chant was like ‘Thick.’ We’d hit our shoulders and [yells] ‘THICK!’ or something like that. I can’t remember what it was.”
While Triple H's 2014 workout video hasn't become the industry standard or even a cult classic among hardcore wrestling enthusiasts, Knight's addition in the video, shouting “Yeah!” a decade before he was wrestling for the United States Championship at SummerSlam has become a bit of a meme, with fans referencing it far more often than the source material. Goodness, if only Trips knew he was six feet away from a future “Megastar,” maybe WWE would have given him the push he's always deserved a lot sooner.
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