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It feels like fans have been fantasy booking who will dethrone Roman Reigns as the Universal Champion, from Bryan Danielson to Jey Uso, John Cena, Sami Zayn, and now LA Knight since… well, since he initially won the title all the way back in August of 2020 at Payback.
Now granted, Reigns has grown considerably during his title reign, going from a performer fans were mixed on to put it kindly to the sort of wrestler who has made a very strong case for being one of the very best to ever do it in a WWE ring, but that doesn't mean fans wouldn't like to see a title change at some point in the future, as the only thing more entertaining than a record-breaking championship run is getting to view it within the breath of its full context, which can't happen until the belt changes hands.
And yet, in the opinion of Corey Graves on his After The Bell podcast, there's a distinct difference between chasing a championship and being a champion, and just because fans like a performer when he's wearing one hat doesn't mean his hype will hold when placed in the other role.
“There's an old adage in this business: The money is the chase. You want to see your favorite chasing the champion, coming up short, and being denied so that they can come back even stronger, and maybe the timing isn't right, but maybe it is,” Corey Graves explained via Fightful. “Maybe LA Knight does manage to pull off the impossible, in which case, yes, it screws up all of Roman's grandiose plans for the record books, [at least] the few records that are left that he hasn't overtaken already. Which, that would be a little disheartening and disappointing from a fan's perspective. But LA Knight is the guy right now, the guy that people want. People are clamoring for more for LA Knight. If he does manage to do it, you have a very valid point, maybe a few weeks from now, people go, ‘Eh, that was our guy, but now he's at the top of the mountain.'”
What would it look like for the “Megastar” to finally unseat the “Head of the Table?” How would he celebrate? Who would he first feud with? And how long would his title reign last: Weeks, months, or even years? Needless to say, WWE Creative will have to think long and hard about that question, as it matters almost as much as, if not more than, who actually pins Roman Reigns for the 1-2-3.
LA Knight earns a major compliment from Ilja Dragunov.
While LA Knight has been busy working alongside John Cena and The Bloodline on SmackDown, the leader of the Yeah Movement recently stopped by NXT to try his hand at guest refereeing, calling the match between Ilja Dragunov and Dominik Mysterio just like “The Face That Runs the Place” did for his match at Payback.
Asked what it was like to wrestle in the same ring as the former Million Dollar Champion, Dragunov noted just how in awe he was of Knight's charisma, as few performers are on his level in that regard.
“LA Knight has definitely had success for very obvious reasons. I mean, like, he probably has more charisma in his little finger than a lot of people in this business will ever have in their entire body,” Ilja Dragunov told Nick Hausman of Haus Of Wrestling via Fightful. “So, that's an obvious fact for me. It was a weird moment because sharing the ring with him for the very first time in this stipulation, just having him as a referee in the match was kind of like, it was a weird experience. It was still like absolutely something I'd like to remember because, again, the whole show on that day was historical. But, just like, how he soaks the reactions of the people, the people don't even have the choice to not react to him, they need to react to him. So they reacted to Dominik, they reacted to what I was doing, and they also automatically reacted to him, so it was a very interesting aura of shifting energies.”
While Knight and Dragunov have never actually wrestled one another, as the former left NXT before the latter arrived from Europe, if both of their trajectories continue on at this rate, it's impossible to imagine a world where they don't cross paths at some point down the line, maybe with the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship around one of their waists to add to the drama.
