When LA Knight ran helplessly away from Bray Wyatt at the end of the Mtn Dew Pitch Black match at the 2023 Royal Rumble, it marked a rather odd spot in his career.
Still on the climb up the WWE ladder after switching back to his very over NXT gimmick after an ill-fated run as Max Dupri with the Maximum Male Models, Knight tried everything he could to get the match over, shooting commercials, doing interviews, and cutting some of his now-signature promos but in the end, the match left fans confused at best and disappointed at worse, especially considering the unusual ending to the match featuring black lights, kendo sticks, and a very obvious crash pad.
And yet now, over a year later, the match holds a very different distinction, as being the final match Wyatt worked before his untimely passing, with his expected WrestleMania 39 against Bobby Lashley scrapped at the last minute.
Discussing what it was like to work alongside Wyatt in his final WWE match in an interview with In The Kliq, Knight admitted that he wishes the match wasn't his foe's final bout before celebrating having a chance to share the ring with him in his first WWE Premium Live Event match.
“I don't really think about it too, too much just because it's a weird thing to consider and celebrate I guess, in a weird way. I wish I wasn't his last match, so I think that's really more the way I think about it,” LA Knight told In The Kliq via SE Scoops.
“That was an experience for me where that was an opportunity, and I don't know that it was looked at as an opportunity in a lot of ways. I think it was just thought of as here's a guy who can handle himself in this situation and help to put the spotlight on Bray and bring him back, as I did. But at the same time, man did I shine a light on myself as much as I could. If they gave me 30 seconds, if they gave me two minutes, no matter how much time I had on that TV screen, my God was I gonna make a splash.”
Despite taking the loss at the Royal Rumble, you wouldn't know it by LA Knight's push after the match, as he continues to see his arrow pointed north on the way to his coronation at SummerSlam, where he won his first big PLE match in the Slim Jim Battle Royal. While it's safe to say Knight likely would have “gotten there” with or without Wyatt, the “Eater of Worlds” did put a major spotlight on his act, and as a result, the “Megastar” will forever hold a debt of gratitude to the fallen future WWE Hall of Famer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaBPPNohxEs
LA Knight opens up about his WWE Imposter Syndrome.
Speaking of LA Knight's appearance at the 2023 Royal Rumble with Bray Wyatt, the “Megastar” commented on that experience on In The Kliq, revealing that the match served as an inflection period in his professional wrestling career, as it helped him to get over the “Imposter Syndrome” of going from decades on the indies to a featured member of the WWE Universe.
“In a weird way, I'm just… I'm still just doing the same job that I always have been doing. You just kind of stay ready in that sense that whether you are in front of 20 people or 20,000 people at the end of the day, you are doing the same job. But there's a little bit of that at the very beginning when things all of a sudden start taking off at such a rapid pace. Where it is almost like, ‘Wait a minute. Things have changed so…' I'm also used to being on the outside looking in where I'm not used to…People kind of welcoming me, so to speak. So I'm used to kind of being on the defense and kind of fighting and whatnot. And so, to kind of feel like, ‘All right. Maybe there's a little bit of support here. It really hit me kind of wrong to where there maybe was something that almost resembled almost an ‘Imposter Syndrome' for a moment. Where I'm like, ‘Something just feels off and wrong and not right here,'” LA Knight told In The Kliq via WrestleZone.
“But I would say that any little bit of that would have been erased by the time we got to the Royal Rumble. Because at the end, a lot of people were saying and point out, and look I haven't even watched the thing back yet. But I was there and I experienced it. A lot of people were saying that was my match. And if that's the case, if that's not the case I don't know. But I would say, I came in, I showed up, I showed out and I shined at the Royal Rumble.
“Now, I didn't come out with the result that I would have liked to have had. But at the same time, I think you're talking about a guy who has proven the fact, not just do I belong here, but I think if you want to look at as far as being one of the top guys, I would say that is the d**nest of truths. If it's not, the truth that maybe I am the top guy. And it just hasn't been quite… It hasn't quite come to fruition yet. But it's on its way.”
Has LA Knight become the top dog in the WWE Universe? No, despite his best efforts, he hasn't broken through that glass ceiling just yet and has found himself stuck firmly in the upper mid-card alongside the half-dozen other performers he'll be sharing the ring with at the Elimination Chamber. Fortunately, it's clear he now firmly believes he belongs in this spot and even deserves more, which is good news, considering he's a few pins away from being the WWE World Heavyweight Champion at WrestleMania 40.
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