When John Cena takes the ring for his second Premium Live Event of the year – his third if you count serving as a quest referee for Payback – at Fastlane, he will be standing alongside one of the most unlikely WWE success stories of the last few years: LA Knight.

That's right, unlike Cena, The Miz, and the performers he'll be standing across from in the ring in Indiana, Jimmy Uso and Solo Sikoa, LA Knight didn't have a character handed to him in his 20s, a character that the system developed into a main roster showstopper, with the “Megastar” instead having to craft much of what he does today on the indies after an unsuccessful sting in the WWE system from 2013-14.

And yet, according to “The Face That Runs the Place,” he sees a lot of parallels to his and Knight's story, as he told Kayla Braxton in an appearance on The Bump.

“I felt great, only because it reminds me of when I started to gain a little bit of notoriety and relevance in WWE. LA Knight and my story run parallel, he kind of just refused to give up and has done it his own way, even with being an underdog and being forgotten by the people in the bowels of the arena, but not by the people in the arena cheering him on,” John Cena said via Fightful. “I think what he's done is incredible. We work so hard to get where we're at, and this is a job that shouldn't exist. I sit in a director's type chair in wristbands and t-shirts, this shouldn't be a thing. So when you get a level of consistency, and you get a certain level of relevancy, you don't want it to ever go away, and I totally respect that.”

Asked about LA Knight's surging popularity, Cena complemented his tag team partner's connection to the WWE Universe, noting that while hype can come and go, this moment is special.

“Man, I could waste all of your time talking about how I love WWE because of moments like this,” Cena said. “No one knows what's going to happen next, and no one can control the narrative, and a lot of times, the audience can tell if they're trying to be controlled or pushed in a certain direction [points at self], and they rebel against it. I think that's wonderful because performers, it allows us to listen to the most important Superstar out there, and that's the WWE Universe.”

How will Cena's match with LA Knight and The Bloodline shake out at Fastlane? Will the duo come out on top as heroes? Or will one turn on the other, leading to a match between the duo at some show in the future like, say, at Crown Jewel on November 4th? Fans will have to tune in on Saturday to find out.

LA Knight reveals the advice he'd like from John Cena.

Sitting down for an interview of his own ahead of Fastlane, this time with the Getting Over podcast, LA Knight was asked if he could get any advice from a performer like John Cena or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson what it would be.

Knight, to his credit, had an idea in mind: How to hide himself away in public.

“Now, I mean, there's certain little things that I want to ask about. How I can just hide myself in different ways? How do you how do you deal with that? I haven't really had that particular conversation. I mean, I always kind of try to grab Hunter whenever I can, and just kind of get a litmus test to where things are going, because I always need to know the direction. That's going to dictate what I'm doing, how I'm doing. Maybe it's a conversation I should have, now that you bring it up. I am the type that I just am not going to want to bother people with that. Again, that protection element comes in when I'm just like, ‘You know what, I'm just gonna not sweat this,' or at least appear that I'm not sweating it, and that'll be good enough,” LA Knight said.

“I mean, I've had to figure this whole d*mn thing out on my own anyway for 20 years. I didn't have a dad in the business. I didn't have any friends in the business. I didn't have any of that stuff. So it was basically, you know, I'm gonna figure it out as I go. That's what I did. Maybe I was a late bloomer because of it, and who knows, maybe it'll be to my detriment.”

One of the more attractive aspects of a young wrestler joining the WWE Performance Center is the sense of community build into the Orlando facility, with legends of the sport helping to coach you up, calling your matches, and, in Shawn Michaels' case, literally booking the shows. After not having that for so long, and, in turn, having to instead navigate his professional wrestling path on his own, getting the rub from multi-time World Champions like Cena and Triple H has to be a pretty incredible thing.