- The WWE United States Champion was the last person to face Bray Wyatt before he passed away
- Knight had originally been given the name Max Dupri when he was called up to the WWE main roster
- Knight has become one of WWE’s biggest stars over the last 18 months
“Goddamnit, finally” feel like two very appropriate words to sum up LA Knight’s main roster tenure and ascent to megastardom in WWE. Two years ago, the current United States champion was going by the name Max Dupri, serving as a fashionista-cum-mouthpiece for Maximum Male Models. Having impressed in NXT and having put the miles in across TNA, NWA and the independent scene for the best part of 20 years, the gimmick shift felt like a reset from which the then 39-year-old may struggle to recover from.
Knight, of course, already had previous unwelcome memories of unsuccessful jaunts in WWE, having briefly spent some time in NXT in 2013 under the name Slate Randall, before being released in 2014.
But with Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque taking over at the helm of creative in the summer of 2022, Max Dupri was no more. LA Knight was back.
Goddamnit, finally.
Speaking exclusively to Pubity during a recent interview, Knight recalls his emotions during what was a tumultuous time for his career.
“There was most definitely some frustration leading into that (returning back to LA Knight). Frustration like, ‘how was this not just the case from the start?’. There was a large level of vindication and a lot of ‘goddamnit, finally’.
“There was a sense of ‘alright, I’ve just had this multi-month setback doing this stupid thing and now, if anything, is that going to kill any credibility in me being me? But I don’t think you can kill anybody’s credibility in being themselves and LA Knight is as much me as I can possibly be, which makes it easy. What makes it easiest to connect with people is it’s a heightened version of me, but it’s me.
“With that in mind, man, the only thing for me was now I get to come in and do my thing, I get to do things like I’ve always done, like I did in NXT, like I was building up to do when I first came up here then had the rug pulled out from under me. All I needed at that point was a platform and that’s exactly what I got. Whether it was a big platform or not and, honestly, sometimes it wasn’t.
“I mean, you look at the match with Bray at the Royal Rumble. We might have had, in all honesty, for the entirety of the match, five minutes? So there wasn’t a lot of time to shine and do a lot of things, but the build up to that match, where I could talk some s**t and have a few matches, that was the moment for me to place myself on the map. And doing that opposite Bray Wyatt made things that little bit easier.”
Knight, tragically, although no one knew it at the time, would be the late Bray Wyatt’s final opponent, squaring off against the former WWE Champion at the 2023 Royal Rumble in a Mountain Dew sponsored ‘Pitch Black’ match that had more than its fair share of critics, mostly due to the distracting, neon glowing gimmick rather than the combatants involved, however.
The recently coronated US champ was the first feud Wyatt entered into after his emotional and heavily anticipated return to WWE in October, 2022. Being entrusted with a role of such importance was not lost on Knight, who spoke fondly of working with the late Windham Rotunda, who would sadly leave us in August of last year at the age of 36, following a heart attack triggered by complications brought on by a bout of COVID-19.
Speaking of what it was like to work with Wyatt and the unique blend of creativity he brought to the table, Knight, smiling fondly, said it was “different, weird, odd, but good. I’ve never been a super big fan of some of the spooky stuff, but when it’s done right and it makes sense, I’m good with it. And the stuff that we were doing, I felt like we were moving in the right direction. It was eye opening and it was interesting and you get to know the guy and you could see this fun loving, happy guy. A family guy. You’d always see his wife and the kids around. It was an all round good experience.”
Following his feud with Bray, Knight’s momentum went meteoric, propelling the former Million Dollar champion into the stratosphere with deafening crowd reactions accompanying every entrance. Fans in every arena and online clamoured for Knight to be given big money programmes and titles yet, while major feuds would come his way, most notably with Roman Reigns and AJ Styles, no championship gold was to be had. Until SummerSlam this year, anyway.
Knight dethroned Logan Paul at SummerSlam to claim his first main roster gold and, although he is not currently booked for a match on the card, will more than likely be making his way over to Europe next week as WWE tour Germany en route to SmackDown and Bash In Berlin in the German capital on August 30 and 31 respectively.
The live crowds have already lit up two major shows in Europe this year, with WWE hosting Backlash in Lyon and Clash At The Castle in France. The eardrum rupturing volume generated inside the arenas has made quite the impact on the crowds back in the United States as well as the WWE roster themselves, which Knight couldn’t help but talk glowingly about.
“Everyone goes nuts in Europe. All over it’s wild crowds. When we did that tour that led into Backlash in France, it was the first time I can remember people singing Randy Orton’s music. And ever since then, the world around, they’re singing his music. And probably everybody else’s too now, but I noticed that one because I was in the ring at the time.
“Randy was saying something to me about wanting to change his music and I remember as that was happening saying ‘oh you’re stuck now, you ain’t changing s**t at this point’. Once the people started doing that, game over. But that’s a classic jam anyway. So I’ve definitely notice that that’s carried over, every song that has words to it, since those European tours, everybody’s taken after that.”
As the newly minted US Champion, fresh off the most seismic victory of his WWE career so far and with gold finally around his waist, it was a fair question to ask if a reimagining of Knight’s infamous ‘Shoes of a Champion’ promo from his Eli Drake days on NWA Powerrr was in the works.
“Oh boy, you never know. I might have to talk about still being on the hunt with the cougars! You never can tell what might come out of this mouth! We’ll see.”
Until then, Knight must await the first challenger to his United States Title as he begins life as the champ rather than the challenger. Goddamnit, finally.
WWE Bash in Berlin airs live on Saturday 31st August from 8PM BST on the WWE Network.
