WWE almost didn’t have “The Mega Star.”
Why?
Because he almost gave up before he became one.
LA Knight appeared on Interstate 70 Sports Media for an interview promoting his showdown against The Miz at tonight’s WWE Payback 2023 premium live event.
During the discussion, the mega-popular WWE Superstar reflected on some of the struggles he faced throughout his wrestling career, and how at one point he almost called it quits.
“There was never a point where I seriously thought, ‘I should go do something else.’ But there was a point where I thought ‘I’m gonna have to go do something else,'” he admitted. “For the first 10 years going through my 20s I was broke as hell trying to get this whole thing done. Working serving jobs, rather odd side jobs and stuff, just to kind of get myself by. To kind of make this work. But at that point in time, I’m in my 20s. So at that point, I’m never thinking any of that. I’m just thinking, ‘I gotta keep pushing forward’ Even though I had other people in my ear – family, friends, girlfriends, whatever. [They’re like] ‘What if you just made it a hobby and then you just did…’ (I said) ‘No, no, no, that’s not for me.’ Once I hit 30, things just started to pick up for me. That’s when I finally started getting paid to be a wrestler. [I] went to NXT for the first time, then I was in impact, then NWA. I was getting paid pretty well at all those places. To the point where ‘Okay, things are working, things are clicking’ But I still needed to get bigger, I still needed to get on a large level.”
Knight continued, “Then I had an opportunity to just come back to WWE starting back in 2016, but the pay would have been a cut from what I was making, and I had never made the kind of money that Impact was paying me at the time. So I was like, ‘Well, let me at least make this for a couple more years and then we’ll entertain the idea.’ By that point in time, you’re looking at a 36-37-year-old guy. Some people look at that number. That’s a little scary, but you have to look at me and realise that I don’t have a big injury history. I don’t have a big surgery history. Knock on glass or whatever this is here. So with that in mind, even though the number says 40, in a lot of ways in this business, I’m operating more on like a 30-year-old’s body. If that makes sense. But the optics of that are not good. So you know when I’m 38 and the pandemic’s happening, I’m thinking ‘Alright, it’s over. Now I gotta figure out what’s the next step? What’s the next thing that I do?’ Because at this point, the world is falling apart. They’re not gonna bring me in, especially with my age here. I kind of just took that mindset and said, ‘Well, if that’s the thought then screw it, let’s just make one more overture and see what the temperature is. I did that. Got that little window of opportunity. I pushed the hell on and here we are. It’s crazy that I even made that move. I didn’t think it was a possibility. I didn’t think it was gonna happen. But it did. And I’m glad it did.”
Check out the complete interview via the YouTube player embedded below. H/T to SEScoops.com for transcribing the above quotes.
