After fighting with AJ Styles in a WWE ring, in the backstage area, in his front yard, and even at the World of WrestleMania experience at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, LA Knight was afforded one final chance to address the crowd on SmackDown before making his way to Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday for a one-on-one battle with the “Phenomenal One.”
“Let me talk to ya! AJ Styles, LA Knight, WrestleMania. Yeah! Yeah! YEAH! Two nights, and I'm feeling fresh as I walk in with the man that some call ‘The Phenomenal One.' Let me level with you, AJ, I do think you're phenomenal. Matter of fact, I think you're phenomenal at not showing up. I think you're phenomenal at running away. And at this Sunday, you'll be phenomenal at getting stomped out by the… by who? Yeah! By the man they call the ‘Megastar.'” LA Knight announced to the crowd on SmackDown.
“So here's how it goes down: there's no more time for running. There's only time for crying, so go ahead and grab your crying towel, dummy. Yeah! You should be running home doing that, because ever since you came back, all you've been doing is crying about me, and what you should be doing is you should be thanking me. You should be bowing at the altar of LA Knight. Because whenever I put the boots to ya, I actually get people talking about ya. I actually make you interesting. Well Sunday night, I'm gonna give him plenty to talk about. Cuz I'm not just gonna put the boots to ya. I'm gonna give you three the hard way as I boot you straight through the uprights like Jake Elliott. And you, Philadelphia, the whole d**n world will know whose game this is, with everybody saying, L-A-Knight, yeah!”
Welp, at this point, what else is there to say, really? LA Knight is ready to rumble, and considering where he was this time last year, without a match on the “Showcase of the Immortals” at all, that's a pretty big honor indeed.
LA Knight was incredibly angry about his lack of push last year.
Speaking of LA Knight's light workload last WrestleMania weekend, the “Megastar” stopped by The Ringer Wrestling Show to talk about his feelings, which *spoiler alert* weren't particularly good, all things considered.
Did WWE not see what the fans did? At the time, Knight was very worried that that was the case.
“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,” LA Knight told The Ringer Wrestling Show via Fightful.
“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.'”
Goodness, what a difference a year can make. LA Knight went from unbooked to a performer with a serious grudge match on the books and if he gets the win, he'll be a favorite to earn a match against a SmackDown Champion in the not-too-distant future. All in all, not too shabby.
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