WWE Superstar LA Knight recently sat down with Mackey & Judd to hype this year's SummerSlam PLE, and during their conversation, it was put to him that his breakout success in WWE is similar to that of Daniel Bryan.
However, the former United States Champion explained why his journey stands apart, not just from the American Dragon, but also from Stone Cold Steve Austin's iconic ascension. Highlighting the distinct circumstances and challenges he faced along the way, Knight opened up about his memorable program with the late Bray Wyatt.
Acknowledging that he was positioned as the opponent being "fed" to Wyatt, Knight described their storyline as something special and credited himself with capitalising on small opportunities to shine through.
"A lot of people make that comparison to me, and I’m gonna tell you how mine’s completely different. His was a groundswell in the same way where it was like the people kind of took over the show and said, ‘Hey, we want this guy.’ However, by that point, the guy had already been an Intercontinental Champion, I think a couple times a Tag Team Champion. He had been in major storylines and all that. I had done literally nothing. I had no machine behind me, nothing."
"I was fed to Bray Wyatt — God bless him, and he was great to me and we had an awesome thing there — but I was literally fed to Bray Wyatt and in those times of being fed to him, I was able to shine in that process to where the people were like, ‘Oh wait, this guy, he’s pretty good,’ and from there they could watch me just have no plan. There was nothing. Nothing for me, nothing for me, nothing for me but in those nothings that was happening, those little one-minute nothings where it was like, ‘Alright, well, yeah, he can talk for a minute,’ I made sure to make the damnedest of that."
"So, when we talk about a Daniel Bryan or we talk about Steve Austin or any of these others who had these groundswell of support, they had already had runs as Intercontinental Champion, Tag Team Champion, pushes. I had nothing. I came in and was just floundering, doing jack nothing, and from there, somehow out of that, just with those little bits of one minute to be able to talk and get my personality out and have a little bit of wrestling, I was able to go ahead and get that groundswell."
"If you ask me, not to toot my own horn but toot toot, nobody has ever done what I’ve done. I hate to say that and sound like I’m over here just blowing smoke up my own keister but it’s just when you really pull everything back, pull all the layers back, nobody’s ever done that."
Knight went on to further explain how his rise from Maximum Male Models' Max Dupri to a firm fan favourite—who fans still want to see in a main event program—ultimately isn't the same as what we saw from Bryan and Austin.
"Not to take anything away from Austin. You’re talking about one of the greatest of all time. But, if you wanna see when he really starts getting the major star pops, it doesn’t really happen until he wins the WWF Championship, the WWE Championship. Me, I was getting the major star pops at Money in the Bank when I hadn’t done a thing. I hadn’t won a championship, I hadn’t done anything. I had been on the roster for less than a year, doing next to nothing. Whereas, again, with Austin, he’d been around now for — what — when he started getting the monster pops, would have maybe been end of ‘97 but I’m really gonna say probably ‘98."
"He’d been on the roster for two years at that point in time. He’d already been, again, Intercontinental Champion. He’d been in major storylines with major talent. I was not… and it’s the same thing with Daniel Bryan, it’s the same thing with all of them. I’m not taking anything away from them. They all still did it. They proved themselves. Still a couple of the greatest of all time but I’m telling you just from that state, yeah, it’s a major sticking point for me. Nobody’s ever done that from that depth."
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